The Last Candle
by Acid-Rush
Summary: COMPLETE Kurtis is dead and with him the ancient order of the Lux Veritatis, but those that have passed on must be laid to rest by those that survive them, and the end of an era can only arrive when it is accepted.
1. Votives

**For anyone that's wondering, I haven't abandoned my other fics in progress, I just haven't been able to write anything good for ages. My muse went on a cultural exchange to work for Aurelin and never came back, so I had to find a replacement. This story takes place directly after the end of AOD.**

**_The Last Candle_**

- For Spitfire, because I broke my promise to her for a PiC update way back in January -

_Votives_

God, she hurt. A stabbing, searing pain in her stomach. She didn't remember getting hit there, but then again in the middle of a fight to the death with the adrenaline flowing, you often only found your injuries afterwards.

Taking heavy, lurching footsteps as she entered the vault arena that she had last left a battleground,Lara Croftreached out to a nearby winch for support as she passed, surveying the area.

"Kurtis." The word barely made a sound as it fell from her lips unbidden, as she found herself staring at an empty battleground, bloodshed evident in a single congealing pool that dripped through the drainage holes to the Lux Veritatis vault below.

His distinctive bladed disc weapon sat waiting towards the edge of the pool, small and its blades quietly sheathed, almost meek against the massive stain surrounding it. Her eyelids flared in shock as it sprang to life in her hands, wrenching her arm and pulling her around urgently as it directed her to the dark cavern beyond from where Boaz had entered. Almost as quickly as it had awoken it fell dormant once more with a final shudder and still holding it aloft Lara allowed herself to grin. He'd won.

Lara walked confidently into the shadows, too busy to notice the rapidly dissipating pain in her stomach. It was dark inside, and she stopped to let her eyes adjust. Slowly, shapes began to emerge and things became clearer. Boxes, crates, equipment…it seemed to be a storage area, but she wasn't interested. Striding forwards, she reached out and clasped her hands onto the rungs of a ladder. She immediately pulled them off again, staring down at a liquid on them that she couldn't see in the darkness. Sniffing warily, Lara recoiled. Blood. Kurtis must have been injured and had come this way.

"I hope that stain back there wasn't yours, Kurtis," Lara muttered to herself with a hint of worry in her voice as she resolutely took hold of the slippery rungs and began to climb. "It was far too large."

Nearing the top, she stepped off onto a platform bathed in a weak light shining through the windows of an adjacent room, and looked inside.

"Kurtis!" Dashing through the doorway, she quickly rounded the table that he was slumped over and reached out for him. Her hands stayed where they were, one on his back and one on his forearm, as her head bowed. It was cold in the whole building and it had quickly sapped the heat out of him. He couldn't have been dead more than three hours and already he was eerily cold.

"Oh, Kurtis." One hand stroked through his hair. It moved to feel the non-existent pulse in his wrist and then slid further to clasp her fingers in his. Still holding his hand, she pulled out the chair next to him and sat.

"Eckhardt's dead," she said quietly to him. "Your father's avenged, don't you worry about that. I'm so sorry it had to end this way. I really am."

Wiping away a tear, she looked around. They were in some sort of briefing room. The large oval table sat in the middle with note pads set at each seat. Soft lighting bathed it in a pale, unobtrusive glow that left the outer reaches of the room shadowed and allowed for the projector screen to be clearly seen. Frowning, Lara slowly stood as she saw for the first time a computer file being projected, and her gaze moved to take in the skewed laptop computer that sat across from Kurtis, his fingers still outstretched to push it away from him. He'd wanted her to see this.

She moved to stand in front of the screen. A three dimensional depiction of the Sanglyph broke into its constituent pieces and rejoined, spinning slowly to the right of a block of text that had been scrolled through to some point in the middle. Lara began to read aloud to herself, realising that Kurtis had found some sort of personal journal of Karel's.

"Awakening of The Sleeper requires the correct administration of the Sanglyph by the proper alchemically altered user. An incorrect methodology or user biochemistry will result in an alchemic overload of the specimen, causing irreparable damage. Only Eckhardt or myself have the necessary attributes to ensure success and the will strong enough to imprint upon The Sleeper the sense of servitude needed for control to be regained. Without this safeguard, our plans will likely backfire, leaving us at the mercy of a strong and politically uneducated specimen – power is only of benefit when used in a wise and timely fashion."

"So," Lara mused, turning back to Kurtis, "I did the right thing, then. Well, that's good to know." She laughed quietly, almost celebrating their victory with him. "It was just a guess, really – bullets weren't working and I was about to get fried. I suppose you could say it was a leap of faith." She laughed again, coming to stand by Kurtis and rubbing his back sympathetically. "Don't worry, it's done."

As she stood over him she found herself becoming slowly overcome by a growing sense of something that pushed away the bittersweet happiness that until now had accompanied his body, replacing it with the need to just break down and cry – regret, but just as the tears were welling, the echoing thump of heavy booted footsteps began to approach.

Quickly, Lara pulled out her gun and ejected the clip. With a rising panic, she saw that it was almost empty, and the sounds told her that there was more than one person approaching. Her eyes darting around quickly, her gaze fell gratefully upon the vent of the air duct high up in the wall, and she sprinted across the room, yanking the cover away and sliding it across the floor to hide it under the table before using a nearby chair to step up and pull herself into the nook. Bruising herself in her haste, she'd barely pulled her legs in behind her before an automatic weapon brandished by a black-clad soldier leapt into view in the doorway, scanning the room for threats.

"Body." The American accented voice called the word almost excitedly, and the soldier stalked cautiously towards Kurtis with the gun trained firmly on the prone man's head to cover a similarly clothed partner who moved in from behind and warily poked their find with a hard shove of a gun barrel. Gaining no reaction, he gingerly reached forward to look for a pulse.

"Oh for crying out loud, Al, just see if he's alive or not already."

"Have you _heard_ the reports on the radio coming out of the sanitarium? Forgive me if I'm a little cautious here, Jack," Alfredo Ricci returned, his English carrying a telling European accent. That wasn't all that was worrying him – rumours had been filtering through to him from his friends in intelligence that his co-workers weren't privy to, and if they were anything to go by then the Cabal had been up to some pretty extreme activities. Finding no pulse in the man's neck, Alfredo let out an audible sigh of relief and visibly relaxed. "He's dead."

"Ok, then let's start searching this place and get out of here before they seal us in with the freaks and monsters." Jack moved over to the filing cabinets and pulled open the top drawers, rifling through the papers.

"The servers are being downloaded, yes?" Alfredo asked, hovering near the laptop.

Jack Tipper spared him a quick backward glance. "Yeah, just shut it down."

There was a silence for a few minutes as they both searched through drawers and files, and Lara found herself feeling close to hyperventilation from her short, shallow breaths as she fought to keep calm and remain hidden in the darkness of the vent whilst still being close enough to see and hear what was happening. There was rank insignia on the men's uniforms, and name tags, but the patches denoting organisation affiliation had been removed. She had no idea who they were. Her gaze flicked back to Kurtis' cold, still form, treated so irreverently by the soldiers and now forgotten. Tears pricked her eyes once more, and then she started as their radios crackled into life, simultaneously spewing out static followed by the sound of background weapons fire.

_"We have a combat situation in the biodome…repeat, a combat situation in the biodome…requesting backup. Over."_

Ricci and Tipper looked at each other, silently questioning whether they should respond or not, given their long distance from the area, but a team closer to the action took the call.

_"Gasquet, this is Maverick and Ramirez – we hear you loud and clear, we're near your position and on our way. Over."_

Jack snorted and returned to his work. "Maverick? Johnson's calling himself Maverick now? Please…"

Alfredo swallowed, his hand stilled on the folder he'd been scanning. "Jack, I don't like it here…we don't know who this man is, so let's just take the body to the vans and I'll swap with someone on guard duty. They can come back down with you."

"Are you kidding? No way! You are not landing me with one of those kids – they're like, _twelve_, I'm not trusting them to watch my back."

"Jack – really."

Tipper stopped and turned, his expression clouding. "What's with you, buddy? You're hardened, man, you don't freak easily."

"From what I've been hearing, it'd be stupid not to."

"Fine, fine." Jack slid the filing drawer shut and walked over to Kurtis. "Let's tag this place for cleaning by the data people and get this guy up top. Come on."

They grabbed one of Kurtis' arms each, Ricci looking relieved, and hefted him up into a sitting position.

"Whoa. Jack, look at this!"

Inside the ventilation shaft, Lara quietly shifted to better her view, but Al was in her way.

"My god…that's just low. Framing a dead guy? Who does that?"

"Do you think Croft wrote it?"

Jack shrugged. "Probably. We might know she's innocent, but the police don't. Even so, shifting the blame onto a corpse to save your own skin…that's just sick. What a bitch."

Shaking their heads in wonder, Jack and Alfredo hauled Kurtis out of his chair, took his wrists and ankles, and began to carry him away.

Lara's face was written in hurt confusion. What on earth were they accusing her of? Giving them time to move out of earshot, she hopped down out of the shadows and moved to the table. There, previously hidden underneath Kurtis' head and splayed hair, was a scribbled message on the notepad laid into the table, the blood-marked pen that had written it lying adjacent.

_'My confession – I am the Monstrum. Croft is innocent.'_

The signature consisted only of a bloody handprint.

"Oh." That was all Lara could manage. No other words would come – just a shocked, whispered exclamation of overwhelming gratitude and a terrible sadness born not only of the feeling that she didn't deserve such gallant behaviour, but also from the soldiers' interpretations of the note.

Reaching out, she laid her hand on Kurtis' red palm print, his bloody fingerprints extending out past her own in their larger stature. "Thankyou, Kurtis," she whispered.

The corridor was, thankfully, lit by emergency lighting only, leaving plenty of gloom and shadows to aid Lara in her journey out of the building undetected. She encountered two pairs of soldiers walking the halls, their radios crackling with reports from similar teams further into the complex. She hid around corners or in alcoves of pipework, unwilling to risk confrontation with her limited ammunition and lack of knowledge as to their intentions. Eventually making her way into some sort of office, she locked the door behind her and moved to the window.

The sky was dark, black clouds highlighted by silver moonlight. Scanning the walls, she found a clock patiently ticking away the hours. It was early, well before dawn. Sliding the sash window open, she looked out and found herself to be on the first floor, a single soldier taking a slow stroll underneath the window on patrol. Moving quietly, Lara climbed out onto the windowsill and, waiting for the guard to disappear around the corner, let herself hang for a moment before dropping down with a soft crunch into the cradle of a small snow drift built up against the wall. She flattened herself against the stonework, stalking along and peeking around to the front of the building.

More militia clustered near the gates of the Strahov in the intermittent glows of portable standing lights, talking, smoking, carrying storage crates into or out of the main doors. The crates being carried out seemed to contain evidence from the Strahov – files, computers, even jars of preserved organisms that must have come from Boaz's labs. They were being loaded into two vans, parked askew inside the walls and already filling.

"Ricci! Tipper! I thought I said to leave the bodies!" Colonel's insignia on his arm, one of the men stepped forwards and stared crossly towards the main entrance. The two soldiers from the briefing room shuffled into view, Kurtis' corpse hanging limply between them.

"It's not one of Boaz's experiments or one of the guards, Sir," Ricci panted. "We don't know who it is."

Their leader marched over and surveyed their find. "He's got a weapon," he observed.

"Yeah. Was lying over a confession claiming he was the Monstrum too," Tipper said.

The commander sighed, considering what to do for a moment. He was hoping that this could be a nice, clean job – just move in, take the evidence, seal the place up. In and out, no problems. It wasn't turning out that way at all, though.

"Alright," he conceded at last. "Get him in a bag and put him in the van."

Ricci nodded, and together with Tipper began to haul Kurtis away.

No sooner had one event of interest finished then another began, and, hugging herself against the cold, Lara stayed crouched and hidden and continued to watch. A police car had slid to a halt just inside the open gates of the Fortress walls, and two officers got out, angrily slamming the car doors shut and marching forwards. The soldiers on guard duty raised their weapons and moved forwards, staring down their sights suspiciously as those clearing the building glanced up for a few moments before returning to their work.

"Prokázat se!" one of the policeman barked.

"I'm sorry, gentlemen," the Colonel replied, moving forwards of his men to greet the visitors, "I'm afraid I can only communicate in English or French."

"Identify yourselves," the policeman demanded, not even acknowledging the greeting.

"This is not your jurisdiction, Officers," the Colonel smiled calmly, "please move on, we have the situation in hand."

"The last time I checked, Prague was our jurisdiction – who are you?" the other policeman insisted.

Not answering verbally, the Colonel simply pulled some sort of wallet from his uniform and held it out. Presumably it held identification, but Lara had no chance of seeing what it was. The two officers looked it over and turned back to the Colonel, voices still belligerent but lower and no longer able to be heard. Grimacing in frustration at being left out of the conversation, Lara decided it was time to get out.

Peeking back around the corner the way she had come, she saw the dancing light of the patrol guard's torch about to round the far corner. Her gaze drifted back to the vans, on the other side of the guards and police. Taking Kurtis' bladed disc out of her backpack for a moment, she looked at it and then returned a resolute look to where the two soldiers from the briefing room were just loading a black body bag into one of the vans. It belonged with him.

Alfredo protesting at having to return to the Fortress, he and Jack went back through the main entrance with another two soldiers, leaving everyone else outside engaged in the insistent battle for authority between the Colonel and the police. Sneaking one last look behind her, Lara crept forwards, crunching quickly through the snow as she passed through the pale lighting of the police car's headlights. No-one noticed anything, and with a sigh of relief the fugitive hopped into the van and crouched down next to Kurtis behind a crate.

Unzipping the bag, Lara's heart fell as she saw for the first time since his death, Kurtis' face. She sighed, shaking her head sorrowfully. He looked pained and worried, no doubt aggrieved by the knowledge that he would die before gaining confirmation of his father's vengeance.

"This is yours," Lara said softly, reaching for the weapon, but as she moved to tuck it into the body bag the blades unsheathed with a violent shudder and once more it propelled itself through the air in her grip, almost causing her to fall. Holding on with all her strength, Lara fought to pull it back towards her, but the disc refused and continued only to strain forwards in the direction of the road that passed on the other side of the Strahov walls.

"No!" Lara complained, pulling back on her own wrist with her other hand, "You belong here!" The struggle waged on, Lara vehemently keeping hold of the apparently living metal despite the feeling that her shoulder was about to be dislocated. Losing strength at last, she collapsed forwards onto her knees, and the disc quieted. Confused, unable to help but wonder if there was something very odd going on with her fallen comrade, Lara surveyed him doubtfully and acquiesced. Resealing the bag, she replaced the weapon in her backpack and scuttled out of the van.

Hiding between the two large vehicles, Lara watched as, looking distinctly unpleased, the two police officers got into their car and drove away, executing a reckless three point turn before roaring off across the thick snow. Low chatter took up between the soldiers and they dispersed, many of them moving into the building upon quiet orders from their leader that were only perceptible to Lara, further away, through body language.

The situation worked to her advantage, however, as only five men remained within the vicinity of the gates, three of them on the other side and talking to each other, the other two meandering aimlessly and facing away from Lara. It was odd, they seemed so relaxed. Maybe they didn't expect any interference, Lara mused. The place certainly seemed to have a reputation with the locals, perhaps most people just turned a blind eye to it.

Keeping low and creeping towards the front of the vans in order to move between the cabs and the adjacent Strahov walls, Lara allowed her own guard to drop – until she found herself face to face with a shocked, lone soldier. Both immediately grabbed for their weapons, clicking off the safeties and aiming at each other in a hasty stalemate.

They stared at each other, neither one quite knowing what to do. Lara's finger began to squeeze the trigger, but she relaxed it again. She'd have no hope if she started a gunfight against them all.

The young soldier's eyes flicked uncertainly back and forth, his teeth biting gently at his lip. He didn't know how to perceive her, that much was clear to Lara. Calculating her chances, her own gaze dancing all around, she decided to drop her weapon…and run.

She turned, sprinting back between the vans and out the other side, keeping her sights firmly fixed on her path and concentrating solely on escaping before the others could react to her.

Barely believing what she had just managed to pull off as she dashed through the gates, her vision took in the snow covered form of a motorbike parked along the roadside. "Kurtis," she muttered to herself as she staggered to a halt with her arms flailing and leapt astride it, "I certainly owe you."

As the engine howled in top acceleration and the bike snaked dangerously across the snow to the slushy vehicle tracks of the main road, the six soldiers on guard at the Strahov gathered at the gate and watched her go.

"Dude, I was just held at gunpoint by Lara Croft."

Another spoke as he began to walk away. "I'll let the Colonel know she's gone."

The remaining soldiers turned their attention away from the panicked woman as a cement truck turned the corner from the direction Croft had just disappeared. It pulled up slowly by the gates and a black-clad soldier hopped out of the cab.

"Ready to go as soon as you've finished clearing it out," he called as he walked over to his friends.


	2. Tribute

_Tribute_

Lara awoke with a start.

Faint whispering seemed to surround her, unintelligible sibilants at the far reaches of the room.

Lying still, her eyes flitted from left to right, straining to identify the shadows around her.

She was in her room in a cheap and discreet Bed and Breakfast hotel, where she'd been a guest since her arrival in Prague just a little over a day before. It covered only the bare essentials, but she'd bought only a little money with her in what she intended to be a short trip to France, and she didn't want to use her credit cards in case the French police were tracking her transactions.

The whispering was starting to grow louder now, and though it may have been her eyes playing tricks, shadows were starting to move.

Without warning, Lara propped herself up on one elbow and grabbed the gun from underneath her pillow, aiming at the darkness in one fluid, lighting move.

No countermove came.

Frowning now, Lara sat up fully, the gun lowering. It didn't feel as if there was anyone there with her, but hints of movement played at the edges of her vision and the whispers were growing to a layered crescendo like a thousand hushed voices. Lara was staring around, twisting left and right in an effort to identify the source, but every form in the room just seemed to melt into each other. At last, she could stand it no longer and leapt from the bed, dashing to the light switch in three long strides and bathing the room in glaring light.

There was no-one there. The voices had simply ceased to be the moment the switch had clicked into place. Lara was alone.

It hadn't been the remnants of a dream, she was sure of that. It had been real. There was something very strange going on.

Lara flicked off the light and crossed the room back to her bed, sitting down and pulling Kurtis' disc from underneath her pillow where it too had been hiding with her gun. It was still; not shaking, not glowing, the blades were retracted. She ran her fingers lightly along its contours, watching the metal glint slightly in the darkness, and remembered the power and life it had had when Kurtis had been its master. Even near his body it had strained at the leash like a dog urging her on for reasons she couldn't fathom. Now, it was dead, just like he was. If he'd followed her out of the pit, maybe he wouldn't have had to be.

Taking one last look around her empty room, Lara sighed in confusion, pushed the disc back underneath the pillow and crawled back under the covers, closing her eyes resolutely.

When she next opened her eyes, it was comfortably, and to the faint sunlight of morning streaming through the thin curtains at the window. She felt under the pillow, reassuring herself that the two weapons were still stowed there safely with the feel of the cold metal against her fingertips, and then padded to her small en suite shower.

The tap protested at first, creaking stiffly, but then it gave in and started to turn freely as the spray leapt out of the showerhead and crashed into the tray below. Leaving the water to heat, Lara turned away and began to disrobe.

The water spluttered for a moment, stopping for a short instant before returning to its previous flow. Slowly, it began to discolour. Pale brown at first, then slightly pink, then a dilute red as the plumbing ejected a blood tainted spray. Still peeling off the clothes that she'd slept in, Lara saw none of it.

The water began to return to clear again as the blood was slowly washed out, the last rivulets of it swirling like the arms of silent dancers in the pooled water of the tray below, delighting in the mockery of their unseen performance behind Lara's back. They swayed towards the plug hole and slid down out of sight, just as the butt of their joke turned back around and stepped into the spray, oblivious.

The shower calmed her, easing her aches and pains and banishing the horrid feeling of dirt and sweat caking her skin, having been too tired to wash upon her return the night before.

Soon, she was feeling almost normal as she flicked her damp plait over her shoulder and leant back to receive her breakfast in the dining room below.

"Thankyou," Lara said, smiling gratefully as the plate of dark bread with butter and two bulging sausages on the side was placed down in front of her. The maid smiled back, not confidant enough in her English to answer, and hurried away.

The orange juice was uncomfortably cold in Lara's mouth, the coffee burning hot. She took enough of a sip of each to wet her mouth and then focused on her breakfast, enjoying the tasty and filling sausages first of all.

It was perhaps because of her hunger that Lara didn't notice the person now occupying the seat across the small two-person table.

"Lara."

She jumped, her gaze snapping up to the woman who was now seated with her at the small round table.

"Putai?" No-one else seemed to have noticed the conspicuous figure, clothed in rough hooded robes with her tall wooden staff held at her side. The Shaman commanded the same kind yet immovable air with her faint smile and strong posture that Lara had awoken to so long ago, in the desert tent after her draining escape from Seth's final blow.

"Putai?" Lara repeated, lowering her voice to a whisper and keeping her head low so as not to draw attention. "What on earth are you doing here?"

"The Chirugai has chosen you."

"The what?" Lara took another quick glance around the quiet dining room, thankful to find the other guests' attentions arrested by their breakfast plans for sightseeing.

"You must take it home, escort it through the demons that seek to wield its powers as their own and see that it sleeps safely."

"I'm not all you think I am, I don't understand you," Lara insisted, almost pleading. The events of the last few days had just been too much – she was fatigued, weary, emotionally drained, and she didn't feel up to interpreting riddles and enigmas that posed questions but never answered them.

"Find the Lux Veritatis," Putai smiled.

Then she was gone. Lara blinked, taken aback. The Shaman hadn't disappeared, she had just ceased to be there.

Lara closed her eyes, staring into darkness before dropping her head into her hand. It was all too much. Despondently, she opened her eyes and took another mouthful of sausage, chewing slowly and savouring the heat and the feeling of growing fullness in her belly. Putai was a cryptic woman, but she spoke wisdom and only led her children on paths they needed to take. It was Putai's wish and Kurtis' funeral. Lara would find the Lux Veritatis.

First, though, she would eat, and eat she did. She had three extra helpings of the modest breakfast and several slices of toast washed down with refills of coffee. The maid laughed lightly as Lara finally shook her head at an offer of more.

"No, thankyou," Lara grinned. "I'm very full now." She patted her stomach to show her satisfaction.

"You are hungry," the maid said, clearing the dishes.

"I haven't eaten much for a couple of days, and I've been moving around quite a lot." Lara stood, moving to leave. "Thankyou for the second helping. And the third." She smiled again and walked out into the hallway, beginning to climb the stairs back to her room. It was well heated in the hotel, positively cosy. Lara closed her eyes once more and tipped her head back as she laboured up the steps. She felt so much better after the sleep, the shower and the meal. The memories of the whispering late interruption were far away, and she was refusing to dwell on Putai's words until she had at least shut her door behind her.

Regrettably, that moment came all too soon. The latch clicked as Lara pushed the door shut. Unseen, a dark silhouette moved across the white painted wood, cast by a nonentity on an empty landing.

"Find the Lux Veritatis," Lara sighed to herself, retrieving the disc from the bed and staring down at its angular, silent form. "Are you this…chirugai thing?"

It didn't answer.

"Oh, what did I expect?" Lara complained, dropping it into the unmade sheets and flopping down by its side. "An easy solution?"

As if in answer, her backpack in the corner of the room flopped over unsteadily, a familiar folder sliding partially out of the unzipped compartment. Luddick's folder.

Lara got up, a smile growing slowly as she approached the bag and picked up the folder, flicking through its contents. "An investigative journalist," she grinned.

An hour later, Lara emerged onto the snow driven streets from a small internet café and hugged her arms tightly around herself, shivering in the sudden cold. A public telephone was a little way down the road, and she set off towards it, pulling a scrap of paper from her pocket and examining it. Slipping into the booth, she dialled the number on the paper and waited as it rang out.

"Ahoj, Greguska Slavik."

Lara started out a little unsteadily. "Do you speak English?"

"Yes, how can I help you?" In his office on the other end of the phone, Slavik rolled his eyes. Another tourist playing detective with the Monstrum killings, no doubt.

"I was an acquaintance of Luddick's…I believe you worked with him?"

"Worked?" Slavik sat up, his eyes narrowing. "Has something happened to him?"

Realising that news of his death wasn't out yet, Lara back pedalled furiously. Being witness to yet another murder wasn't exactly desirable. "No, no, of course not! I…I just didn't know if you were still working together or not. It's been a while since I spoke to him last."

"Oh." Slavik settled back down into his chair. "It's just that he's been following some dangerous stories lately. Things can…happen to you. Anyway, what I can help you with?"

Thankful that she'd got out of that potential minefield, Lara relaxed. "Luddick seems to have quite a talent for finding things out about people. I wondered if you shared the same sources."

"You want information on somebody?"

"Yes. Anything you can find."

"I'm not a library, Miss. Unless there's a story in this for me or you're a source with something to give me, I'm afraid I have better things to do."

Lara grimaced. She'd offer money if she had any. There was only one other thing she could give, dangerous for everybody as it might be. "There's been some rather interesting activity in what Luddick called the Strahov Fortress lately…a large guarded building on the outskirts of the town?"

"Tell me something I don't know. There's always interesting activity there. Why do you think Luddick was interested?" Slavik's voice rose and he leant over his desk agitatedly, stabbing his finger at thin air in a gesture that its intended recipient couldn't see. "Anyway, every journalist in the city knows about the soldiers that were there last night. It's been sealed with concrete and you know what else? I don't care! And neither does anybody else except for Luddick. Smart reporters learn to keep their mouths shut sometimes."

"Luddick isn't a smart reporter?"

"Luddick's a dead reporter if he doesn't listen to us and leave that place alone!"

"He's already dead."

Silence struck. Slavik blinked, his mouth gaping slightly. Slowly, a look of shock settled across his features. "Dead?" He breathed the word without even realising. After all his warnings to Luddick, all the phone calls for him that had turned into dead lines the moment they were picked up by anybody other than Luddick…even after all that, he didn't actually expect to hear that the threats had finally been carried out.

Lara didn't speak, waiting for the news to sink in and for Greguska to signal he was ready to continue. God knows she knew what it was like to lose someone.

Moments passed, and then Slavik swallowed, composed himself and picked up a pen. Luddick was a reporter, and a damn good one. If he'd been killed investigating the Cabal then Slavik would do his memory proud – he would run the story.

"Give me the name of this person you want to find. I'll do my best. But I'm not giving you anything unless you tell me everything you know about the Cabal and Luddick."

Lara nodded, understanding. "Where and when do you want to meet?"


	3. No Haven

_No Haven_

The door swung shut behind Slavik and he stamped his feet on the welcome mat, clumps of snow falling off the side of his shoes to be joined by smaller flurries shaken off his coat. Leaving them to melt into the already-sodden weaving, he stepped forwards into the club of crowded booths and occupied pool tables and settled himself at the relatively deserted bar.

The barman set the whisky down that Slavik ordered and moved away to continue polishing glasses.

'For Luddick', Greguska thought to himself and then raised his glass to the barman. "May he plague the angels with exposes of their sins!" Ignoring the puzzled look he was returned, Slavik downed the liquor and slammed the glass back onto the polished wood in front of him before sliding off the stool and making for the bathrooms.

Disappearing down the short corridor towards them, he quickly checked back to make sure that no-one was watching, and then carried on past the entrance to the mens' and slipped out of the fire exit, stopping to prop it open with a small stone before hurrying out towards the snow covered bins in the back alley.

"Couldn't resist stopping for a drink before you came here?" The voice had a cutting edge but was somehow also joking, the voice of a person who'd forgotten how to laugh.

"Going into a bar is less suspicious than going down an alley." He walked towards the woman with the voice he recognised from the phone and looked around to make sure they were alone. She looked cold, hugging herself in clothes that were too thin for the climate and that covered a thin, tired frame. "A first name and an accent isn't much to go on, but I think I found your man. Is this him?" Greguska held out a print-out of a photograph and immediately pulled it back as Lara grabbed for it, recognition on her face. "I told you, you don't get anything until you tell me what happened to Luddick."

Lara nodded her head in vague agreement. "This is his dossier on the Cabal, or Mafia as he thought they probably were. He gave it to me on the understanding that I'd find some things out for him when I went into the Fortress." She pulled the slightly battered folder from underneath her jacket and held it out. "There were gaps in his notes, I filled in what I could."

Slavik flicked through the pages, noting Lara's English pencil notes in the margins coinciding with Luddick's scrawled Czech. "You speak our language."

"I'm a bit of an historian. Czech was an important language in mediaeval Europe. I understand enough to get the gist of his writings."

"An historian as well as a grave robber, murderer and fugitive, eh?" Slavik spoke with an air of lighthearted mocking, as if he was unafraid of her reputation. "It wasn't just your man that I researched. The French police certainly do have a high opinion of you."

Lara was in no mood for it. "Just tell me about Kurtis."

"This doesn't answer my question," Slavik pushed, waving the folder at her. "What happened to my friend?"

Lara sighed, her face softening. "He was caught by the guards whilst I was inside. I saw him brought in. They murdered him."

"A ritualistic killing?" Greguska looked sickened, overcome.

"It was the Monstrum, yes."

Slowly, the reporter nodded. "And…and what were you doing in there?"

"Killing a killer."

They stared at each other for a long moment, unblinking. Lara's gaze dared him to press her further for a story that was too dangerous to tell and yet begged him to force her to share it. Slaviks's eyes simply drew the line.

"This is your man," Slavik said at last, holding out the printed photograph. "I guessed if he was involved with you then he might have entered the country illegally, and he had. Came in via the highways with some crooked delivery drivers. A lot quieter than murdering your way through passport control, yes?" He looked up from fidgeting with his own dossier on Kurtis, fixing her with a lightly accusing stare from underneath the rim of his hat. Lara narrowed her eyes defiantly and stayed silent.

"Anyway, after he entered Czechoslovakia things went quiet. Nobody's heard or seen anything of him. So, I got you details on his past rather than his present." Slavik held out the thin folder to her, containing just two pieces of paper and a few photographic printouts. "His name has been Trent since he joined the French Foreign Legion. Before that," he shrugged, "I don't know. He left the Legion eight years ago and took work as a mercenary. The only contacts for him that I can find are soldiers from his Legion unit."

"He changed his name?" Lara asked, not really that surprised. "So no-one knows anything about him prior to the Legion?"

"No. The Legion didn't really care to ask."

Lara sighed heavily, looking over the meagre notes. "Well, thankyou. I suppose his old comrades are my only lead, then." She shuffled the papers back into the cardboard folder and pushed it underneath her jacket before pinning it there with folded arms that tried desperately to warm her frozen hands. "You must have called in a lot of favours for this." Her gaze towards him was grateful and yet despondent. Slavik simply nodded imperceptibly in understanding. "I have Luddick's story." Giving her one last look, he turned and slipped back through the fire exit, kicking the stone out and leaving the door to click shut behind him. Ms Croft was not out of the darkness yet.

Her partner – if only deserving of that title for a short time – stared back at her from the photograph, eyes glinting as he smiled genuinely at the camera. Trudging through the cold and snow back to her Bed and Breakfast, Lara's mood sank deeper and deeper into mourning. Mourning for Kurtis Trent, ex Legionnaire and warrior against evil. Mourning for Luddick, reporter searching for justice against the local Mafia. Mourning for Werner, faded hero crushed like the fragile soul he was. Mourning for Lara Croft, lost and forgotten.

The cold became a distant sensation that was no longer her concern, and Lara found herself wholly numb. The man in the photograph continued to stare back, smiling oblivious to his or her predicaments.

He looked so young. It must have been taken a good ten years previously. It was an upper body shot of Kurtis, in his Legion uniform, but the informal posture suggested that it wasn't an official picture. His hair was shorter and the stubble had been banished, but those piercing eyes hadn't changed at all and the carefree, easy smile led Lara to imagine that it had reeled in more than one pretty girl at a smoky bar frequented by the rebellious soldiers of France's foreign forces.

He must have had plenty of friends in his unit, there was no way he couldn't have been liked and respected. Hopefully he was close enough to them for at least one of them to be her link to his past. Taking one last long look at the photo, she slipped it into the folder and looked at the details of Kurtis' last known whereabouts.

The delivery depot. Stopping and staring down the street leading in the direction of the industrial estate marked on a map from Slavik, Lara hugged the folder to herself and set off towards her hotel.

Within an hour she had packed up, checked out and paid her bill with what little cash she had left. She now sat astride the revving bike – Kurtis' bike – with one foot supporting their weight and surveyed the delivery yard before her. Relatively small and poorly maintained, the yard was backed by a large rusting warehouse baring the faded sign of an engineering company that exported any machinery they were asked and able to make. Peeling paint and rusting doors told of a poor profit margin and the grey surroundings made it easy to imagine that such a small insignificant company might harbour employees willing to improve upon their meagre wages. Taking one last look around at the workers milling about their duties, Lara pushed off against the snow-covered pavement and rode slowly down towards the nearest loading lorry.

The men looked up as she approached, dirty and sweat streaked from their labour. The bike purred to a halt in front of them and they regarded her with suspicious eyes.

"I'm looking for Kramoris," Lara declared.

"No one by that name here."

Of course they'd say that. Kramoris was apparently not the most law abiding of citizens. "I'm told that he helped out a friend of mine," Lara said, pulling Kurtis' photograph from her pocket and holding it out to them. One of the workers clasped his fingers around the bottom edge to angle it towards him within Lara's grasp. He looked up, recognition in his eyes, and she cocked a slyly questioning eyebrow at him. He'd believe she was genuine now.

"Over there," he conceded with a nod of his head, letting go of the picture. "He's not cheap."

"Competing for business?" Lara asked mockingly.

"I wouldn't risk anything so dangerous as trying to fool the border police, especially not with wanted criminals having broken the borders already," he shot back.

"Thanks," Lara replied coldly, "but I can look after myself." Slamming the bike into acceleration, she circled tightly next to the man and tore off.

When she stopped once more with a small squeal of brakes at the lorry that had been indicated to her, her voice was demanding. "Kramoris?"

"Ano?"

The man that had spoken stepped down out of the open back of the vehicle and regarded her contentiously, a smudged clip board in his hand.

"I need to get to France."

"The train station is on the other side of town."

In answer Lara only showed him the photograph, pursing her lips and looking away impatiently as she exaggeratedly switched her weight to one foot.

Kramoris stared at it for a few seconds before raising his chin in consent. Then he gave a cursory glance of the yard and stepped towards her. "Two thousand Euros," he said quietly.

"I don't have that kind of money."

"Then you don't have a lift, do you?"

Lara sighed, meeting his gaze steadily. "Look, I can get you the money in France."

Kramoris barked a short, sharp laugh. "Of course you can!" He paused and then spoke again, shortly. "No deal."

"There must be something!" Lara begged. "The bike? I can give you the bike."

He looked it over and snickered. "You must be joking! That piece of junk wouldn't pay your way to the end of the block."

The driver turned and began to move back towards the end of the lorry, hopping up into it and beginning to heft a heavy crate into position. Lara, lost, gaped for a moment before springing forwards after him. "Wait!" she began, but a strong vibration took up in her backpack, resonating uncomfortably right through her body and causing her to stop dead before shrugging the bag off quickly. Reaching inside, her fingers came into contact with the quite painful sensation of strongly shaking metal. Frowning, she took a firm hold of the shuddering bladed disc and pulled it out, staring at it almost in disbelief. She jumped as the blades snapped out in front of her, and then gasped as it surged to one side as it had done in the Strahov, yanking her arm sharply as it pulled her around with it.

Her eyes widened as they caught onto something and her gaze travelled slowly upwards from the disc to the open gates of the yard beyond. Black smoke, thick and billowing, was looming in a sourceless cloud between her and the only exit, moving and altering slowly as though alive. Without warning, the heavy gates to the yard slammed shut.

The deafening clang alerted the hitherto ignorant workers, their heads snapping up towards the noise and their eyes and mouths widening at the sight of the alien plume. Someone shouted in Czech, a heavy cargo box was dropped with a crash, and the smoke pitched forwards, gaining rapidly in speed and streaming against the wind as it headed directly for Lara.

Stunned at first, her survival instincts quickly kicked in and she dived out of the way as the smoke rushed at her, rolling across the concrete with the frantically pulsing disc coursing its terrified vibration through her arm. Screaming and yelling took up in the yard and footsteps rang out as the two dozen workers began to scatter, leaping into their vehicles or running for the open hatch of the warehouse. Kramoris, crying out in terror, hammered his fist into the side of the lorry's metal cargo hold and screamed for his workmate outside to get behind the wheel and drive, but the man was far ahead of him and was already in the cabin scrabbling around desperately for the key.

The smoke rolled for a second, seemingly eyeing up Lara, and she took the chance to scramble to her feet, snatching up her bag as she did so and dashing away at full pelt.

At last finding the keys in the rubbish of crisp packets and road maps, Kramoris' partner Blazej grasped them in shaky hands and fought to slide them into the ignition. Pushing hard, the shaft of one eventually slipped in and he twisted it forcefully, the engine wheezing before rumbling into life.

Lara risked a fleeting look over her shoulder as she ran to find the smoke almost on top of her. Giving a screech of fright, she dived, falling forwards into a roll and stopping the tumble with a jarring push of her legs against the ground as she flipped heels over head. The smoke sailed straight over her as she lay on her back for a split second and then she pushed herself over onto her hands and knees and ran again, sprinting for her bike as the tyres on Kramoris' lorry squealed in a sudden and overly fast acceleration.

The black plume took chase once again, but as she looked over her shoulder it was further away this time. Her sudden escape had bought her the extra seconds she needed, and as she threw herself onto the bike and kicked the engine into life, she watched with frantic breathing as the smoke surged across the distance between them as fast and unstoppable as a tidal wave. Finally, she got the revs she needed, and as she harshly kicked the stand away she tore her gaze from the rapidly approaching danger and took a chance.

She threw the bladed disc away into the air and laughed in almost hysterical relief as, instead of plummeting to the ground, it took flight and raced away towards the gate. Her hands now free with the straps of her bag caught across her elbow, Lara swung the bike around with a screeching of rubber and fled after the disc as Blazej, foot firmly on the gas, crashed through the closed gates. They were smashed open, twisting and bending and being almost completely ripped from their heavy hinges as the speeding vehicle forced its way through, Lara and the disc close behind.

As Lara leant around the corner out onto the road she threw her gaze back. The smoke was still chasing them and gaining, despite the bike's speedometer climbing alarmingly fast to the maximum and the disc speeding forwards as fast it could manage.

In the back of the lorry Kramoris stared out of the open end and bit his lip. There was no way any of them could outrun that thing, certainly not the lorry, but maybe they could hide from it. Humanity and fear chasing away any thoughts of refusing anyone who couldn't pay, he searched desperately for a solution. It came to him, and he ran forwards in the lurching vehicle and kicked down the tailgate. Bouncing as it fell against the road, sparks flew. Lara met his gaze and caught the invitation in the pleading look of his eyes. Taking one last determined look back to the black smoke, she leant forwards and forced the bike into an even faster acceleration. Catching up to the lorry, she gave a quick lift of the front wheel and bought it back down again on the fallen tailgate, rushing up the ramp and into the HGV, slamming on the brakes and sliding the bike sideways in an effort to stop before she crashed into the back. The disc followed, sweeping past her head with blades whirling and chopping, and Kramoris reached down and grasped the inside handle of the tailgate, pulling it up into place and leaping up to bring down the rolling door with his full weight, the shutter slamming home against the tailgate just before the black smoke bore down upon them.

It collided with the closed lorry, smashing and breaking into a thousand wisps of pale grey before evanescing slowly out of existence.


	4. Sanctuary

_Sanctuary_

The lorry edged slowly forwards towards the French-German border control, and Lara's heartbeat quickened from more than just the stuffy claustrophobic conditions of the cubbyhole she was wedged into.

A false wall at the back of the lorry's hold, it afforded a tall and wide, but narrow, hiding space. It was dreadfully hot and airless and Lara had been standing still in it for near on half an hour.

'Half an hour's journey either side of the borders,' they'd said, 'to be safe.'

Not a moment too soon, the lorry stopped and Lara heard the sound of muffled voices. A minute later the loud rattle of the shutter door being slid up reverberated throughout Lara's metal cell and she closed her eyes and concentrated on breathing calmly.

"Where are you taking this?" the border control officer asked in English, stepping up into the space.

"Toulouse," Kramoris answered, calm and indifferent, almost a little bored. He certainly was a well-practised smuggler.

Echoing footsteps moved around the vehicle, slowly approaching Lara's position. She swallowed.

"Will you be staying in France or heading straight back?" the officer asked conversationally, milling around between the crates near the false wall.

"I get a couple of days paid holiday at my destination if it's a long trip."

"Very nice."

Silence for a moment.

With a bang, a fist slammed into the false wall, deafening Lara in her tiny enclosure and flexing the metal in so much that she felt it press into her leg. She gasped in fear, quickly silencing herself and freezing her muscles stock-still. Kramoris jumped but remained silent, meeting the officer's smug gaze.

"It's a very thin wall."

"I'm not a smuggler," Kramoris sighed, apparently long suffering. "Go ahead and search."

"Thank you. I will."

He began to run his hands over the seams and Kramoris watched, outwardly calm and uncaring. Inside, Lara silently and frantically prayed to every god she knew of.

"Monsieur Moreau!" Another man in the border control uniform came running up, slightly breathlessly repeating the hail. "Monsieur Durand veut vous parler tout de suite. Je reprendrai votre travail pour vous."

Lara frowned slightly, still panting quietly from the heat and the stress, understanding the familiar language immediately, but unsure of the implications – the officer, apparently named Moreau, was being called away to speak to the boss and the newcomer was to take over the search.

Moreau's mouth twitched in annoyance. He was about to make an arrest and now this man – obviously just a new employee; he didn't recognise him – was going to steal the credit. At last, he gave in. Durand was not a man to be kept waiting. "Fine," he replied in gruff French, "but that wall is false, check it." He pointed to the wall with an angry jab.

The other officer nodded, doing nothing as Moreau walked away. Lara, blind as to the proceedings, didn't breathe. Kramoris stifled the urge to run.

"Right, Sir" the officer said to Kramoris in cheerful, French-accented English when Moreau had disappeared, "may I see your papers please?"

He gave them a cursory once-over and then, keeping them in hand, turned and hopped down to the ground, moving around to the cab to check Blazej's passport photo against the man sat waiting in the passenger seat. Finding everything in order, he returned the papers and raised the barrier.

"Welcome to France." He met Kramoris' puzzled stare with a steady, unrevealing smile and said nothing more. The smuggler, giving one last confused look, took two steps backwards and then turned and ran to the back of the lorry, slamming down the shutter and hurrying back to the driver's seat, racing the vehicle away before their chance was gone. Lara, completely bewildered, sank down as low as the space would let her and gave her full weight over to the close walls.

The barrier lowered behind them and the car next in the queue rolled up.

"Do you speak English?" the heavy New York accent of the attractive woman behind the wheel asked hopefully.

"Actually, Ma'am," the officer replied with a genuine American twang and a flirtatious grin, "I happen to be from Alabama. May I see your passport? The name's Jack Tipper by the way." He grinned even wider and leant on the sill of her open window. "You do realise that under the new anti-terrorism laws I have to take your address and phone number down, don't you?"

* * *

The wall fell away and Lara fell with it, collapsing completely down to the floor with her fringe plastered wetly to her forehead.

"Here," Blazej offered, holding out a bottle of water. "Sit down over here and drink."

Lara took it gratefully and gulped the cold liquid down, sitting heavily on the proffered crate and wiping the sweat from her face with heavy fingers. "You should install air conditioning in there," she said dryly.

"You can put that in the suggestion box," Kramoris replied, sitting opposite her. "I don't know how we got away with that, but we did."

"A trap of some kind?"

"I don't think they can do such a thing."

Too hot and exhausted to think much more, Lara just dropped her head into her hands and decided to accept her good fortune graciously. "Well, I was about due for some luck." She drained the rest of the bottle and attempted to pull herself back together. "Where are we?"

"Not far from Saint-Die," Blazej answered, taking the bottle and replacing it with a wetted cloth which Lara took to her neck and chest.

"We can drop you off anywhere between here and Toulouse," Kramoris offered.

"Thanks, but I need to get Paris." Lara stood and moved over to the crate that they'd quickly put together before leaving Czechoslovakia, to hide the bike in amongst the legal cargo. She rested her hand on top of it and turned to the men. "I can leave you the bike as payment but you'll have to drop me somewhere where I can get transport to the capital."

"Like I said before," Kramoris joked, not unkindly, "that junk wouldn't even pay me to take you to the end of the block. Keep it." He moved over to her and placed a friendly hand on her arm. "Besides, I get the impression that you need all the help you can get."

Nobody had mentioned the black smoke since their escape from it. Lara didn't want to even try and explain it, Kramoris and Blazej didn't want to know.

"Go," the smuggler offered, jerking his head towards the shutter door. "We're only going South from here. Take your bike and your close calls with you."

Lara gave a small smile. The two men had done more than she could have asked for. Hefting a crow bar, Kramoris cracked open the crate as Blazej lifted the shutter and dropped the tail gate, and Lara, giving one last nod of thanks, threw her bag onto her back and sped out onto the French highway.

The long drive up to Paris passed uneventfully. Lara refused to worry about being recognised by the other motorists – she was too tired of hiding. She'd run if the occasion called for it, but she wasn't going to raise her stress levels and her profile by looking over her shoulder every five minutes.

That attitude, however, was soon replaced by a familiar fear as she entered the gradually growing hustle and bustle of the outer reaches of Paris. She pulled the bike over at a junction and gazed around at the people, cars, shops and buildings, all of them heaving around her completely oblivious to her presence. It felt tenuous, fragile, as if at any moment someone might point and shout and the whole city would erupt into an accusing mob, bearing inescapably down on her from all sides.

Pushing the thoughts away, she located a road sign directing her towards the city centre and set off once again. She was heading for the flat of a man that was her only connection to Kurtis – Richard Connolly, an ex Legionnaire and now citizen of France.

The dusk's pale light covered a multitude of sins, among them Lara's as she moved through the blue evening that made facial features almost unidentifiable under the strange limbo between day and night. Feeling safe enough to expose herself by looking, she rode slowly through the streets in the area she knew was correct until eventually she saw the road name she recognised from Slavik's scrawled handwriting.

The apartment building was upmarket, stone and conifers with an ornate set of steps leading up to a raised ground floor. Pressing the buzzer, Lara waited for a reply.

"Oui?"

"Mr Connolly? I'm sorry to arrive unannounced but I'd like to speak to you about an old friend of yours, Kurtis Trent."

"Who are you?" Richard returned suspiciously, clearly Australian.

"A friend of his." How could she risk any more given her infamy?

An audible sigh sounded over the intercom. "Alright, come up." The door buzzed in its own unique tone and Lara entered, hurrying up the thickly carpeted stairs to the flat on the third floor.

"Mr Connolly." Lara greeted him earnestly as he opened his front door. He regarded her for a moment, not answering and not quite knowing what to make of her. At last he spoke.

"You're Lara Croft. You were on the news."

"Yes. I am." There was silence for a moment and, uncomfortable, Lara leapt back in. "Please, Mr Connolly, just give me a chance, this is very important and if you'll just let me – "

"What does this have to do with Kurtis?" Richard interrupted shortly.

"I need to find his family."

The man blinked, considering. "Alright," he said, pulling the door wide, "come in."

"I'm very sorry to tell you," Lara ventured as she sat in the indicated chair at the window-side table, "that Kurtis has…passed away."

"Really?" Richard said without a hint of upset or concern as he poured some coffee from the filter. "We thought that quite a few times. You'd be surprised what that guy can live through."

"Oh no, I'm quite sure of it."

"Yeah, so were we." He set down two cups and sat across from her, staring out at the rapidly darkening sky from the large panelled window that dominated the grey un-plastered walls of the modern studio abode. He turned back to her, a genuine question in his eyes. "Did you kill him?"

"No." Lara's gaze fell to her drink. "No, he died fighting. I found his body afterwards. We were working together."

"Well. I should have realised that Kurtis was involved with this Monstrum thing. He just couldn't stay away. Or they couldn't stay away from him."

"They?" Lara looked up sharply, intrigued.

"Demons? Ghosts? Just plain evil? All I know is that wherever there was Kurtis, there was weird stuff and lots of it."

Silence followed as the words sank in. A few moments passed and then Lara spoke again, more quietly. "Now that he's gone I need to return his things to his family. Do you know where I can find them?"

"Well," Richard replied, leaning back thoughtfully. "All I ever knew of was a father who died when we were still in the Legion and a mother who, so I heard, went soon afterwards. Cousins or aunts or uncles – I don't know. No brothers or sisters, I know that."

"Well, do you know where they lived? An address, an area?"

Connolly rose and moved to a modern black cupboard, opening it and retrieving a battered cardboard box from the top shelf. Placing it on an adjacent sideboard, he pulled out a postcard and held it out in front of Lara. She took it with a questioning glance before examining the picture.

"Kurtis never really mentioned his family but whenever the subject came up amongst the guys I got the impression that he hadn't got on too well with them. He never got mail either but one day Scott came in with the delivery and threw that postcard down on Kurtis' bed. He pretended to ignore it until everyone was wrapped up in their letters, thenhe picked it up, glanced at it, and buried it straight in the trash. When I went to throw my own envelopes away I fished it out and kept it. I thought one day he might regret getting rid of it, so I kept it for him."

Red block letters read, 'Wendover, Utah' in one corner of the postcard, on top of a picture of a view down the centre of a high street, shops and people lining the pavements down either side and shrinking towards another row of buildings that crossed at the end. Lara turned it over, seeing the ornate scrawl of the sender that read only, 'Don't forget your home - - Konstantin'.

"Konstantin was his dad," Richard explained. He was silent for a moment and then, his voice a little sad, he continued, "Kurtis was always running – from his family, his past, those weird happenings that seemed to follow him around…the Legion was his refuge. Family, friends, job, life – they were all the Legion."

"So…you believe that he's dead?"

Richard shrugged weakly. "Well, looking back…we knew it'd all catch up with him one day."

Not knowing what else to say, Lara stood, pushing the postcard across the table towards Connolly. "I'll go to Wendover, then." She laughed hopelessly. "I have no idea how I'll get there with the police after me, but…"

Richard looked up, surprised. "You don't know? They closed the Monstrum case yesterday morning, you're not wanted anymore."

"They did?" Lara was stunned.

"Yeah. They won't say why, they haven't charged anybody – they've just closed it. The victim's families are up in arms about it. They've been practically rioting outside the police headquarters since the press conference."

"Really? Well…I…suppose I'll catch a plane then." She smiled, cheerfully this time, and headed for the door. Richard followed, holding it open as she stepped into the corridor.

Turning back to thank him, she hesitated. At last, she decided to ask.

"Mr Connolly – what was Kurtis like?"

Richard looked back at her for a moment and then stepped aside to let her re-enter. "Come in. There'll be plenty of flights in the morning."

Grinning, Lara sat down on the sofa and fixed an intent gaze on Richard as he took a photo album from the cardboard box and launched into his stories. They talked of training, fighting, friends and women until, tales exhausted, Lara lay alone on the sofa in the dark fingering the postcard of Wendover, Utah.


	5. Appearances

**This chapter thanks Chirugal and Catlantean. Catlantean pointed out a mistake I'd made in using the name Czechoslovakia when in fact it has been the Czech Republic for over ten years, and Chirugal was the origin of the idea of taking DeCombel as Kurtis' true family name. She doesn't know I've borrowed it yet, but I'm sure if I send her chocolate Kurtis', she'll forgive me. :-D**

_Appearances_

Slowly, her face a picture of amazement as if the reality had only just occurred to her, Lara walked closer to the television suspended from the ceiling, her eyes fixed on its pictures. She was being confronted with a news report, and film of her arriving at a charity ball two years previously. She couldn't hear the words over the clamour of the busy airport, but it was obviously a report on the closing of the Monstrum case and the subsequent protests that Richard had told her about. The film changed to a rowdy picket outside a police station, French officers trying to fend the victims' families from the doors and television stations and journalists jostling amongst the chaos searching for interviews and pictures.

Suddenly realising the gravity of the situation, Lara blinked herself back to the present and, looking about to make sure that no-one recognised her, quickly hurried away.

Disappearing into the crowds and making her way to ask for available tickets, the woman who was perhaps only unofficially wanted, left behind the news channel as it recapped the press conference in which she had been proclaimed no longer a suspect and the case had been closed. Inspector Mirepoix stood stony faced delivering his statement from behind a teak lectern whilst in the background, standing to attention with a closed expression and eyes that roved the crowd daring anybody to argue, stood a man that, if Lara had stayed, she may have recognised as being Alfredo Ricci from the Strahov Fortress.

Having secured herself a seat on board a flight to Salt Lake City Airport, Lara checked the tickets and tucked them safely into her bag as she made her way to the bathrooms in the departure lounge. She hadn't slept much the night before, having stayed awake until the early hours reminiscing with Connolly about the two very different sides of the man that they had both known. It had been a cheering conversation, one that had chased away some of the depression and replaced it with a nostalgic joy that had lasted throughout the impromptu wake. Settling down finally on the overstuffed sofa, she had wondered what family of Kurtis', if any, she might find in America, and whether or not she would see him in their eyes.

Remembering the tales that Connolly had shared with her, and laughing to herself at the unwarranted anger that the feeling of Trent's eyes boring into the back of her in the Café Metro had produced, she paid little attention to her surroundings as she walked into the toilets.

A hand caught the door as it swung shut behind her and a dark and ominous figure followed her in.

Lara stifled a yawn as she bent over the sinks, splashing her face. The cold water refreshed her tired eyes, numbing the ache and allowing her to plaster her fringe away out of her face where the strands couldn't bother her. Wiping one last wet hand over her skin, she looked up into the mirrors and jumped.

There was one other person in the otherwise empty room, black eyes seeming to laugh at her cruelly as they stared down at her, the man standing a few feet behind her and reflected in the mirror. His hands were in his pockets and his stance was casual, but his face wore an expression of pure malice.

"This is the ladies' room," Lara said politely, turning to face him. "I'd appreciate it if you could leave."

The man didn't react. Eyeing him curiously and rather distastefully, Lara decided not to push the situation, and made for the door. Pulling on the handle, she found it locked. She stopped. She turned the lock but it only spun uselessly, apparently broken. Then, she slowly looked back to the man. He was smirking, hands still in his pockets.

"You killed my uncle," he said, calmly, a little accusingly.

"I'm sorry," Lara replied, moving from the door and straightening up, "but you're mistaken. I'm not the Monstrum and I have been declared innocent."

"You killed my uncle," he repeated.

"Who do you mean? I didn't kill anyone!"

"You're a murderer!" He lunged forwards, hands grasping through air for her throat, and, gasping, Lara instinctively leapt backwards. Her attackers hands closed on nothing and she flattened herself against the wall, setting her weight against it and raising one leg to push hard against his chest with her foot, shoving him backwards. He staggered and she took the time to get into a fighting stance.

Lashing out with a kick to his side and a punch to his face, she drove him back further, falling painfully against the hand drier mounted on the wall, before she ceased her attacks and waited for him to make the next move. It seemed that he was just an angry mourner looking for blame; she wouldn't fight him more than was necessary.

He was panting slightly, staring up at her from underneath dark eyelashes with a look of hatred. "Murderer!" he reiterated, darting forwards once more.

His words cut deeper than she liked to admit and threw her off balance slightly. More distracted than she liked in a combat situation, she side stepped his advance but missed the chance to attack from behind as he rushed past her, leaving him free to elbow her in the stomach as he spun to face her once more, landing a hard punch to the side of her face.

She fell against one of the dividing walls of the toilet stalls and he was upon her, slamming her head into it dizzyingly before flattening her against it. He brought one bent leg back to knee her in the stomach but through the haze she managed to anticipate his move and drove the heel of her palm forcefully into his eye. He cried out in pain and removed his hands from her shoulders and Lara, having the advantage once more, shoved him away from her. Before the man could recover she had taken hold of his upper arms and was pushing again, driving him back against the sink units and bending him back over them, gaining a grimace from him as the hard tiled edge dug into his back. She placed her legs against his and leant over him, pinning him and rendering him helpless.

Her face almost desperate, she shook him. "I didn't kill your uncle! I didn't kill anyone!"

The anxiety on the man's face faded, metamorphosing into an expression of cruel triumph with a twisted smile. "You're a murderer," he hissed. "How many people have you killed, Lara? How many did you need to kill?"

Shaken, she released her hold and backed off, shaking her head defiantly as she stared back at him. Still grinning, he pushed himself back onto his feet and watched her retreat.

Suddenly, a movement caught her eye and she looked up to the mirrors. Putai! Her teacher, she was there, off to one side in her rough robes with her ever present staff, gazing back compassionately. Instinctively, Lara looked to the area where the shaman should have been standing, but it was empty. She glanced back to the mirror – that, too, was no longer showing her presence, but the brief appearance had been enough. Regaining her focus, Lara turned her attention back to her accuser and planted her feet solidly.

In answer to the invitation, he took two fast steps forward and drew back his fist, ready to take a blow at her head. She blocked the move, countering it with her own hit to his temple, then kneeing him in the opposite side before following it with a swift kick and pushing off from the ground with her other foot to land another boot to his ribs before the first foot had even touched back to the floor. Thoroughly beaten from that tirade, the man fell.

Most people wouldn't have got back up again so quickly. This one began to get to his feet as soon as he had landed.

Moving back to put some distance between them, Lara thought quickly. There was something wrong – he was too strong, too resilient, and his accusations had been more than just retaliatory lashes. She needed a weapon, but her guns had been dumped in the Seine, illegal and impossible to get through an airport. Her own registered weapons had been left in England, all she'd had on this particular excursion she'd stolen or found.

Her opponent was on his feet now, breathing heavily and staring at her intently. He meant to kill her.

Mind still desperately searching for an idea to tip the scales to her advantage, Lara continued to back away.

She stopped. She'd backed into something and now it was pressing into her neck, small and round. Just like the gun that Kurtis had held on her in the Louvre.

His blade weapon! Maybe…

With a practised movement, Lara reached over her shoulder and yanked the zip on the backpack, fumbling inside for the metal. Her fingertips found it, vibrating with a motion that she hadn't felt until now, apparently dulled by the other articles in the bag. Her fingers slipping easily into the holes, she pulled it out and held it aloft.

The man's eyes flicked to the silver in her hand. He stared at it, his gaze only occasionally flicked back towards her as, slowly, he stalked forwards.

Forcing herself to ignore every survival instinct, Lara swallowed and closed her eyes. She slowed her breathing. She concentrated. She pictured the weapon awakening, blades snapping out frighteningly as they had under Kurtis' control.

The disc jumped in her hand and she heard the sound of the blades unsheathing.

Her eyes flew open and she looked up to the armed weapon in her hand, glowing with specks of orange and vibrating promisingly. She turned her attention to the man. He was still, staring up at the blades, his posture tense and his expression closed. He didn't seem frightened, but he was certainly wary.

"Go," Lara commanded. "Now."

Slowly, his gaze travelled over to her, taking in her expression, analysing her tone of voice.

He took one small step forwards.

Lara jumped, holding the disc a little higher. She wasn't sure if she knew how to use it. It had almost seemed to fly of its own accord in Prague but it had apparently done that too when it had circled her in the airlock with Kurtis, and when he'd used it as a weapon to cut down the gong in the Louvre and to knock her off balance in the Galleries, it had seemed to be under his control. Using it to fight was very possibly something that required more ability than she had, and she wasn't sure that this was the best time to test that theory.

Apparently, he had reached the same conclusion. He lunged, diving for her with a cry and his hands once again reaching out for her. She jumped back, hurling the disc into the air without even thinking and focusing on his eyes in an instinctive effort to gauge his intended movements.

The sound of flesh being cut interrupted his battle cry. Blood sprayed into Lara's face, and she recoiled, falling back against the tiled wall with her eyes screwed shut. There was a metallic ring and a dull thud.

Lara opened her eyes and looked down. The man was lying at her feet, dead, blood dripping copiously from a long, deep laceration that began at his temple and cut clean through his eye and the bridge of his nose to the cheek on the other side of his face. Quickly, the body blackened, seeming to shrivel as if burnt and taking on tones of brown and charcoal black as the skin withered and shrunk inwards as if the body was nothing but flesh and skin. She watched, amazed and sickened, as it eroded into nothing before her eyes, leaving only a thin smattering of black dust on the white ceramic floor.

She took in a fast, shuddering breath.

The disc still had its blades extended, two of them partially buried in the plywood door of the toilet stall. It was no longer glowing, just hanging, embedded. She reached out slowly to pull it free and it came away easily in her hand. Confused, she stared at it and then, closing her eyes, remembered how the blades retracted as fast they had shot out when Kurtis had plucked it out of the air. It jerked in her hand again and when she looked, it was once more a deceptively plain lump of metal.

There was…something. Something in the back of her mind, a connection, an idea, a feeling… She blinked, focusing on it, trying to pull it to the forefront of her consciousness, to grasp it.

Chirugai.

Disbelieving, she shook her head as if to clear it and examined the weapon once more. There was no doubt about it, she now knew. As Putai had suggested in the hotel, Kurtis' weapon was called the chirugai.

She laughed to herself, a little surprised. Then, giving the chirugai a small toss, she caught it again and pushed it back into her bag as she strode quickly to the restroom door. Thinking it still locked, she took a firm hold and got ready to give it a sharp pull to test the strength of the lock, but there was one last thing to check.

She looked back across the toilets to the blood spattered wall she had been backed against only a minute before. The only thing that stuck out from it was a pipe running from floor to ceiling with the small wheel of a valve at shoulder height. She didn't think she'd been close enough to the wall to have that poke into her neck, but there was nothing else it could have been. Shrugging, she yanked the door, and fell as it swung open freely. For some reason, it wasn't locked anymore.

It was late afternoon two days later when, purring quietly, Kurtis' bike was brought to a gentle halt outside the small convenience store in Wendover. Lara parked it in front of the door, within easy view from the shop. She'd paid a small fortune to get it shipped from France at short notice and cleared by customs, and she certainly wasn't going to let it get stolen or vandalised after all the trouble she'd gone to. She paused, running her hand along its battered paintwork as she considered her motives for bringing it with her. A part of her was as attached to it as she was to the chirugai – she'd barely known him, but there had been a connection of kindred spirits and she was in debt to his kindness in professing her innocence with his last movements. The bike and the weapon were all that remained of him and she didn't want to let either one go just yet.

A customer exited the shop behind her, the squeak of the door bringing her back to her senses. Letting out a short breath of feigned composure, she turned and entered the store.

"Hi there, can I help you?" the young assistant smiled. He was an older teenager, with longish brown hair gelled into spiky waves and an infectious smile behind braces that he clearly wasn't ashamed of.

"Yes." Lara returned the smile, coming to stand at the counter. "I'm looking for some people that may or may not live here anymore. I'm afraid I really don't have much to go on at all, just the photograph of the family's son and his first name, and the name of his father. I don't even have a surname."

"Oh," the assistant replied. "I, erm…I don't really know what I can do. How long ago did they live here?"

"From the late eighties to the early nineties, at least, I think." Lara pulled out the photograph of Kurtis and handed it over to the boy, who took it curiously. "His name was Kurtis and his father was Konstantin."

"Oh!" His gaze shot up, suddenly realising who she was looking for. "You're looking for the DeCombels!"

"The DeCombels?"

"Yeah, they were like, the local rich family. Famous around here. Everyone knew them. Everyone still knows of them. They had the big house on the hill just outside of town. You know how every town has a legend that kids use to scare each other? Ours is the DeCombels – all the kids tell each other stories about weird orange lights seen around the house and they dare each other to go and knock on the door. They even did it when there were still people living there, when I was kid." He laughed. "None of us were ever brave enough to wait around for them to open the door. God, they must have been so sick of us."

Lara took back the photo as he held it out, keeping her eyes fixed on the assistant. "So there's no-one living there now?"

"No. I think, years ago, there used to be quite a few of them, like a whole big family, but when I was a kid there was just Mr and Mrs DeCombel. Their son joined the French Foreign Legion, Mr DeCombel died about…ten years ago? And Mrs DeCombel died a little after. I guess Kurtis owns the house now but I don't think he's ever been back. He might have come back to bury Marie and Konstantin, I guess, I don't know – I was pretty young when they died."

Lara stared at the photo, lost in the few memories she had of the man. "Kurtis DeCombel…" she said to herself. "No, you're right, it doesn't suit you."

She looked up to the teenager again, smiling, feeling she should offer some sort of explanation. "It seems that the DeCombels are connected to quite a prestigious family name in England – I'm a journalist, I'm writing a story on it. So, the house is not far from here?"

"You can't miss it. Just take the main road down that way," he said, indicated a direction out of the window, "and keep going. About a mile past the last houses you'll see the house to your right, on the hill."

"Thankyou," Lara smiled, feeling a little more optimistic in her quest, and then, holding up a finger, "one moment…" She turned and disappeared into the shelves, looking for food, toiletries and all the other essentials she'd found herself travelling without.

Half an hour later a full bag of groceries was swinging violently on the handlebars of Kurtis' bike as Lara eased it slowly up the overgrown and long disused track from the main road to the DeCombel house, her gaze never straying from the magnificent yet dilapidated structure.

Surrounded by a high wrought iron fence, two tall black gates loomed ahead of her to provide entrance. The paint was peeling and chipped, the understated decoration of cast iron ivy winding throughout the bars was broken in places having rusted right through, and the tarnished head of a golden lion above the lock was blinded by dirt. The lock itself was broken and taking its place was a rusting chain wrapped several times around the inner two bars, secured with a hefty padlock that was also corroded. Sighing, she let it fall from her hands; there wasn't a key and it was likely to be one fused mass inside anyway.

Deciding to leave the bike outside for now, she took her bags and pushed them through the bars before jumping to the lower branches of a tree a few feet from the fence and climbing with strength and precision to the upper limbs. Camouflaged, she crouched still and looked towards the house.

Greying and rotting wooden slats covered the exterior walls, black broken tiles, missing in places, lay across the main roof and those of the jutting upper windows, and crumbling stone balconies dotted around the three upper floors hung partially obscured by ivy. The cold grey sky of early spring gave the most appropriate backdrop for the eerie house that seemed to be doing its best to live up the local childrens' stories. It was obvious that it had begun to fall into disrepair a lot longer than ten years ago.

The leaves rustling around her, Lara crawled forwards to the edge of the branch, and propelled herself out of the greenery, her arms circling wildly as she flew over the fence and plummeted to the patchy grass beyond, landing heavily but safely. She stood, regarding her surroundings for a moment, before retrieving her bags and walking the several yards down the broken path to the grand front door.

It was oak, dark and stained. A wide smile breaking out on her lips, Lara reached out and ran her fingers over the huge central carving that crossed the seam of the double doors. It was ornate, in relief, and something she recognised from Carvier and Werners' research – the symbol of the Lux Veritatis.

Determination renewed, Lara moved her hand towards the heavy brass door handle – and then quickly withdrew it as the handle suddenly dipped and the door swung open. Looking up to the figure in the doorway to see who had pre-empted her arrival, she stood frozen in shock.

Kurtis.


	6. Origins

_Origins_

"Lara!" A wide grin spread across his face, smoother and less weary than she remembered, and he pulled the door wider to fully reveal himself, dropping a backpack that had been in his hand. "Lara, you're ok! I'm glad! Come in, come on in."

He stepped back to allow her to enter but she didn't move, instead just standing and staring, her mouth slightly open in a show of confused shock.

"You're…dead," Lara got out at last. "I saw your body, you were stone cold."

"Well, I admit, I wasn't in the best of health, but I'm a pretty resilient guy."

"You're ok," she said, seemingly trying to force the revelation into acceptance as a hint of joy crept into her voice, "you're actually alright."

She smiled, uncertainly at first, before finding herself giving in to a fully-fledged grin. Kurtis smiled back, both of them lost in the other's eyes in a moment of silent mutual gladness. Realising that Lara was too reserved to do anything more, Kurtis took charge.

"C'mere," he muttered and took her in a tight, close hug. She returned it, closing her eyes and she concentrated on soaking up the assurance that he was indeed alive and well.

"Come on," Kurtis said, breaking the hug and taking her hand to lead her inside. "I was literally just on my way out but that can wait. Come in."

Down a short corridor with closed doors on either side they moved through an archway into the large open plan lounge, sweeping stairs with peeling varnish underneath a thin layer of dust climbing to a door lined landing to the left. The furniture, old, grand and battered yet seemingly clean, consisted of sofas and armchairs with three low coffee tables and a black and white television as well as a mahogany baby grand piano that had clearly been wiped down quite recently. A heap of yellowed dust sheets lay abandoned in a corner.

"Maid's on vacation," Kurtis offered.

"Hmmm." Lara's tone was unimpressed, but her face told a different story.

He gestured for her to sit down, and she did, gravitating towards the portable electric heater. Her host disappeared through a swing door and the muffled sounds of hot drinks being made filtered through into the lounge.

Lara sat, stunned. She was completely floored. She'd seen his body, felt his cold skin, closed the zip of his body bag above his pale and clammy face. Even when Richard Connolly had held the conviction that Kurtis was still alive, Lara had held the conviction that Kurtis was most definitely not. And yet it seemed that Richard had been right – it really was surprising what the man could live through. She hugged herself, feeling a little ill, and stared towards the closed kitchen door. Deep down, she just couldn't shake the feeling that the man behind it was nothing more than a white, cold corpse.

The door swung open again, in the opposite direction this time as Kurtis shouldered his way out, and he let it flap shut behind him as he turned to reveal two unmatched mugs of coffee of his hands.

"The place has been empty for years," he said as he handed Lara a mug and sat down next to her. "I've only been back a couple of days. It was my parents' and then mine after they died, but I haven't lived here since I was eighteen." He sighed, staring around at the high cobwebbed ceilings and dim lights filtering through glass lampshades that were thick with dirt. "I've kind of missed it, actually."

Lara gave a quick, small smile, still unsure of what to say. Noticing her discomfort, Kurtis launched into a subject that he knew she could engage in.

"So I saw on the TV that the case against you has been dropped. It was good to hear."

"Eckhardt's dead," Lara blurted. "Your father's avenged."

Kurtis smiled, dropping his gaze to the marked floors. "I know. Thanks. I kind of feel like I should have done it myself, but…" He trailed off, suddenly sitting up straighter and putting on a mask of carefree happiness. "Your guy's avenged too. Erm…what was his name? Von Croy? 'News said you worked together or something. It's good to know. Too many innocent people get caught up in things like this."

Lara nodded. "Yes, they do."

There was silence for a moment as Trent's expression slowly faded, suggesting that he'd already given up the futile attempt to avoid the real issues. "So…Ms Croft. Not to put too fine a point on it, but you were brought here? To give me something?"

Lara shifted, wrapping her hands tighter around the mug and feeling the uncomfortable contrast of her frozen fingertips against the hot ceramic, the heat pulsing into her flesh so strongly that it almost felt cold as well. Reality crept in. She knew that the Sleeper was dead, Karel's journal that Kurtis had left for her in the Strahov confirmed that. And, knowing that Karel was also a Nephilim and having seen him caught in the blast from the dying Sleeper, it was likely that Karel was also destroyed. There was just a little niggling doubt in the back of her mind that reminded her that Karel had pretended to be Kurtis, and she had seen Kurtis' body, and now Kurtis was sitting in front of her asking her to give him a mysterious and obviously powerful occult weapon.

"I have my concerns…" Lara began, but Kurtis cut her off, leaning back and nodding knowingly as he spoke.

"You think I might be Karel." He smiled, obviously a little annoyed. "It's fine," he assured her. "There's no rush. You can stay here a few days until you're happy that I am who I say I am and you can give it back when you're comfortable."

"And you won't just take it from me?" Lara raised an incredulous eyebrow.

"I can't," he replied shortly. "You're right, I did die. But, I'm the last of the Lux Veritatis and the Lux Veritatis can't afford to become extinct. So I was brought back. Whilst I was dead the Chirugai chose you to look after it. You're its mistress now and as long as its mistress is alive the Chirugai can't be taken, it can only be given. If I stole it from you, it wouldn't work."

Lara was surprised, she had no idea the weapon was so complicated. She unzipped her backpack where it sat at her side and pulled out the blocky sheath, hefting the weighty metal in her hands as she wrapped her fingertips around the holds and felt it vibrate with the barest of movements. Experimentally, she rose and held it out towards Kurtis. Everything she'd seen so far had suggested that it had some modicum of intelligence, surely it would react to its true owner.

It didn't.

The blades didn't snap out, the vibration didn't increase, there was none of the orange glow that seemed to accompany it when it was fully awake. It seemed totally uninterested.

"I died," Kurtis explained, guessing her intentions. "Then I came back. My…energy, I guess you would call it…it's changed. The Chirugai doesn't recognise me any more, but it will, once you give it to me."

Lara looked up to him. He was staring back at her openly, his eyes genuine and patient. "Take your time," he reiterated.

Then, he turned and snatched up the bag that he'd had when he'd first opened the door, and slung it onto his shoulder, his demeanour switching directions once more. "Now I really do have to go out – we've got no food, no phone, no gas or water…the house has its own generator and I've filtered some water from the butt outside but we really need to get the utilities back on." He started backing off towards the door, still talking at her. "I'll bring back some take out for dinner – Chinese is ok, right? Or pizza? Are you vegetarian? Never mind, I'll bring back menus and we'll choose. Until then there are chips and stuff in the kitchen. Make yourself at home, explore, have fun, I won't be long." Reaching the front door he opened it and closed it behind him. Then he opened it again.

"Hey, you brought my bike! Cool!" The door shut again and half a minute later the faint sound of the motorbike revving into action floated up to the house.

Disturbed by the casual, everyday manner of her host that emanated safety and domesticity, Lara hugged the sleeping Chirugai to her chest.

The house Lara found to be, though smaller and faded in its glory, not unlike her own. It was a large mansion with dozens of rooms, each one of them richly decorated and traditionally furnished underneath the dust sheets, disrepair and abandonment. It seemed as if the DeCombels had fallen on hard times in their later years – though she expected a certain amount of tarnish after being left empty for what must have been over a decade, she didn't think that the thinning carpets, damaged wood work and obviously unused rooms were down to being left alone.

Taking her exploration up onto the second floor, she found bedrooms. The first four were disused, with uncovered mattresses on the beds and empty wardrobes and dressers, and she did nothing more than make a cursory examination before closing the door behind her and moving on. The fifth room, however, was different.

Opening the door, she let out a small murmur of delight as she found a room left in tribute. The basic decoration was the same traditional grandeur of the rest of the house, consisting of panelled lower walls with faux Victorian wallpaper above, a large wooden double bed, and carved furniture. It was hidden, however, underneath a clutter that reached into the furthest corners of the room and collided with posters covering the walls and the brightest, most clashing set of throws, cushions and bedclothes that Lara had seen since the 80s.

A small, old television and video recorder sat precariously on the end of the dresser with the wires trailing dangerously towards the sockets. Piled on the floor next to them and thick with dust were some old video tapes, the top one being a copy of Edward Scissorhands. A green snowboard fell out of the wardrobe when she opened it to find just a couple of items of clothing, and then, disturbed by the movement, the glue on the back of a Twin Peaks poster on the inside of the door gave way, and it fell onto her head. The books on a shelf were mostly the originals of stories that had been turned into films in the late 1980s and next to them sat an original lava lamp, the red substance inside breaking down with age. This was obviously Kurtis' room. He'd said he'd left when he was eighteen. Wherever he went, she mused, he'd travelled light. Apart from the missing clothes it didn't look like anyone had ever intended to leave.

Lara sat down on the bed, smoothing the covers around her and smiling to herself as she remembered her encounters with the mysterious adult in France and their later alliance. They'd only known each other during an extremely stressful situation and the jarring contrast of his friendly and relaxed behaviour that day – however put on to disguise the emotional aftermath of their fight against Eckhardt – had seemed too foreign to fit. Now, however, seeing the room from his teenage years and sitting on the bed where sleep had likely been a lot more peaceful than she suspected it was nowadays, she wasn't so sure.

A sudden darkening indicated a presence blocking the light from the hall and Lara quickly looked up to find Putai staring at her once more from the doorway.

"Putai!" Lara stood, surprised to see her again. "What's wrong? What is it?"

Putai's expression was serious, but Lara thought she caught a hint of empathy in there too. "Only give up the Chirugai when all doubt is gone," Putai said. "Don't neglect your duty."

"Why?" Lara demanded, the words worrying her. "What's wrong? Is he Karel?"

"Didn't you kill Karel?"

"I don't know, that's what I'm asking you!" Frustrated with the constant mysticism, she stepped closer and matched Putai's gaze with one that demanded answers. "Putai, I am grateful for everything you've done for me, but you need to give me more."

"Just be mindful of doubt," the shaman smiled. And then, once again, she wasn't there.

Lara sighed, fingering the Chirugai in her hands uncertainly. She looked up as a small thud sounded close by and, her face written with confusion, she glanced around hoping to find what it was that made the noise. Looking down at the ground, she frowned. There at her feet, with no apparent origin, was a small rock. She bent to pick it up, staying crouched as she looked it over and felt the crumbly texture against her fingertips. It was grey and irregularly shaped and it occurred to her that it was possibly part of the masonry of the ailing house, but when she looked up to find the ceiling undamaged, she realised that she had no answer for its sudden appearance. Writing it off as just one of those things, Lara decided to forget about it, and put the rock into her pocket before resuming her exploration of the house.

Returning some two hours later, Kurtis walked up the path towards the door. He stopped, listening. There was the sudden sense that there was a crowd behind him. Everywhere was silent, the air seemed colder, and the sky was darker. Knowing exactly what he'd find, Kurtis looked back over his shoulder. Shadowy entities hung timidly at the edges of the garden, tangling with the fence and gates in tendrils of invisible mist. He glared, staring across the gathering with cold eyes, his mouth twisted into a sneer. Slowly, the shadows fell back and disappeared into the invisibility that they had never left, and daylight was allowed to reign once more. A bird twittered and Kurtis, smiling smugly to himself, continued on up the path.


	7. The Wall

_The Wall_

"Yeah, right," Kurtis said distastefully, "like slaying a vampire is that easy." He narrowed his eyes and stabbed a finger towards the old television several feet away, the channel button on the set clicking as the station changed itself from Buffy The Vampire Slayer to CNN. "Like Dad couldn't have afforded colour and a remote control," he muttered disdainfully. "Just like a Lux Veritatis, always living in the past. No wonder they're all extinct."

"What?" said Lara, looking up sharply from her take out order of won ton soup.

"Well, it's not like I was ever a proper Lux Veritatis, is it?" Kurtis replied smoothly. "And I did die. As good as extinct, at least."

"You weren't a proper Lux Veritatis?"

"No, I left to join the Legion. You read my file from that journalist of yours."

"Oh," Lara replied, nodding. "So you didn't finish your training?"

"No." Kurtis lifted his legs from where he'd had them stretched out across the sofa and turned to properly face her, prodding with chopsticks at the box of chow mein in his hands. "I got to the final stages but I missed about three years. The practical skills are all there, I just missed a lot of the theory. Just as well really, I never was one for book learning."

"I see."

Silence took over once more as they both returned to their meals and Trent kept one eye on the television. A murder report came on, the newsreader explaining how a young girl had gone missing, presumed dead, and a grief stricken father began to appeal for information.

"He so did it," Kurtis remarked, waving his chopsticks towards the screen. "Look at him, he's totally guilty."

Lara let out a sharp breath, letting her spoon clatter onto the saucer that her polystyrene cup of soup was held on. Surprised, Kurtis looked up with an expression of distasteful suspicion.

"You don't have to pretend, you know."

"I'm sorry?" Kurtis asked, unimpressed.

His guest looked away, frustrated, angry with herself, and tired of being so unsure all the time. "I was there," she cried argumentatively, "I know what it was like, I know what happened, I know what it's like to have people close to you murdered. Just stop pretending that everything's alright, that you're not feeling anything, and that none of this has got to you."

Frozen, Kurtis took a slow, shallow breath as he fought to remain calm, and then replied quietly, his voice carrying a faint tremor of covered anger. "Everything is alright."

Lara leaned forward, practically begging him to talk to her, to really talk. "You're just pretending."

"Might I remind you," Kurtis said loudly, leaning back as he put his dinner on the seat next to him and crossing his arms, "that you don't actually know me. I'm sorry if this is not how you think I should be acting, but Prague was just another day's work for me, and my dad was dead to me long before Eckhardt got to him. I'm. O. K."

Lara sighed, closing her eyes in a moment of pain as she failed to break the invisible wall that she imagined – that she hoped – was there. She opened them again when she felt the plate in her hands lighten, and she found Kurtis standing over her with their meals.

"Bring the drinks," he ordered, and then he turned and started off up the stairs. Confused, Lara picked up the glasses and followed him as he led her silently up to the top floor of the house. Reaching the square landing with two rooms in the centre and others lining the outside, he strode forwards around the corner and stopped in front of a large framed photograph hanging on the wall. He sat cross legged in front of it with the dinners still in his hands and returned Lara's as she sat down on the floor next to him.

"The DeCombels," he stated. Lara stared up at the large rectangular colour photograph of a group of 17 people in a formal arrangement staring stoically at the camera. The background was a marbled photographer's backdrop in greys and dark blues, and the sitters were all wearing black clothes of various styles. In the centre of the foreground was a tall black iron candlestick with a thick white candle burning brightly.

"Your family," Lara guessed. She pointed towards the bottom right corner where a young boy with short tamed hair stood in front of a man and a woman. "That's you and your parents." She had seen the picture already whilst touring the house earlier, and had spent several minutes comparing the boy to the man she knew and trying to decipher what his father must have been like judging solely from his face.

"Not my family in terms of blood relations, no." Kurtis, staring up at the picture and continuing to eat, launched into an explanation.

"The Lux Veritatis is – was - made up of several Houses, each one of them having anything from five to thirty members. They live communally so that they can work and train together, and use the House name as their own so that to anybody on the outside it just looks like an extended family living together. DeCombel isn't my surname, it's my House name."

Lara looked at him, surprised. "So Trent is your real name after all?"

"No," he replied shortly. "It's Petrov-Sutherland. My mother was a hippie," he continued dryly, "she insisted on keeping her own name after marriage."

"Oh." Lara smiled. "So the other houses would be…er… Vasiley, Limoux, Aicard…"

"Yeah." Kurtis looked at her, surprised that she knew. "Each of the original heads of the Houses chose the names. Most of them named them after themselves. How did you know?"

"Their statues were in the Vault of Trophies."

"Oh." Kurtis nodded, understanding.

"So anyway," he concluded, taking another mouthful of dinner, "that's the DeCombels. My House. The Lux Veritatis had Eckhardt imprisoned but he escaped during the war and started hunting us down in revenge and to stop us from stopping him. He was powerful, and we hadn't fought an enemy like that in centuries. We couldn't handle him." He shrugged, resigned and accepting. "For fifty years he exterminated us. The Houses broke up as we scattered to try and help each other and make ourselves harder targets, we died, and eventually there was only a handful left…and then just me."

He was staring at the floor now, sorrow written on his face and the chopsticks barely hanging between his limp fingers. "I just didn't want the pressure of being told that I was the future of the Lux Veritatis, that I had to complete my training and fight because I was the young blood of a dying breed. So I left. The only reason I had the shards and the Chirugai was because there was no-one more important to have them. I'm not special, I'm just the only one left."

Lara looked steadily at him. "Why are you telling me this?"

Kurtis' face hardened. "I don't have a right to mourn," he whispered harshly. He leapt up and marched away and Lara stared after him, stunned.

C, C, C, B, B, C, E –

C, C, C, B, B, C, D, B –

Being blessed with a combination of natural ability and strong musical education, the notes floating up the stairs from the piano as Lara descended to the lounge a quarter of an hour later were easily identifiable, along with the painfully obvious recognition that whatever Kurtis was trying to play, he didn't really know it.

C, C, C, B, B, C, D, A, G –

Another experimental tap on the G key. Then the tune started again.

"Anything I might be able to help you with?" Lara asked, coming to stand on the last few steps.

Kurtis looked up, smiling half-heartedly. "I'm way out of practice." He eyed the crockery balanced in her arms and turned back to the keyboard. "Just drop 'em in the sink."

Lara propped open the kitchen door with an old doorstop left on the floor and turned on the taps to begin the washing up.

"I'm sorry if I overstepped the mark," she ventured, shouting over the running water and stuttering piano, "but it's just that…" She trailed off, unsure how to continue. A far more confident one-handed rendition of Ode To Joy took up in the next room, sounding ironically bored. "I suppose I'm still a little dizzy from everything that's been happening. Even before I'd left Prague there was…" She gave up as she turned off the taps, not even sure that she was being listened to anyway. In the lounge, the left hand joined in equally unenthusiastically.

Leaving the dishes to drain, she walked slowly back across the large living room towards Kurtis and came to stand behind him as he sat at the piano. The song finished with a heavy, drawn-out chord and, the notes fading as the keys remained dipped, his shoulders sagged.

"Why did I have to be born into a war?"

Lara sighed soundlessly, her whole being suddenly overcome with sympathy for the broken man before her. Slowly, hesitantly, she reached out a hand towards him, and felt the last few bricks of her resolve begin to crumble as she desperately tried to cling on, and Putai's words echoed in her memory.

_Didn't you kill Karel?_

She was so tired, so weak. So alone.

Surprised, Kurtis stiffened as something clicked, and he slowly turned to find himself staring into the barrel of his own Boron X, obviously stolen from his bags whilst he'd been out.

Still and calm, he flicked his gaze over Lara questioningly as she stood, swallowing, shifting her weight and flexing her fingers around the gun, threatened.

"I'm not Karel," he said slowly.

Lara, her face set in determination, lifted her chin challengingly. "How do you even know who he really was? Or that he could shape shift?"

"I died. Went to that great Lux Veritatis hold in the sky." He smiled, trying to relax her, before becoming more serious and genuine. "We saw what you did. Karel is dead."

"I want to trust you." Her words were shaky, her composure rapidly failing.

Kurtis stood, moving towards her. The tip of the gun pressed into his chest as he forced his way closer, placing warm hands on her upper arms and coming to stand just millimetres from her.

"Then trust me."

Her expression became one of clueless submission as her mind, too overloaded with motives, suspicions, worries and stresses, ceased to function. She let out a shuddering breath as he leaned in closer and she let her eyes slide shut as he placed a slow, light kiss on her lips.

He pulled back again, just slightly, and searched her eyes as they flickered back open.

And then his arms were around her, pulling her tightly to him as he kissed her deeply and pressed his body hard against hers.

The gun clattered to the floor.


	8. The Eye

_The Eye_

Warm, refreshed and encased in soft, thick bedclothes, Lara awoke with a smile as she gently stretched. Kurtis was still asleep at her side, duvet under his arm as he lay facing away from her. She watched him silently, biting her lip gently as she thought back to the night before and then grinning. It was so good to have someone again, to be held and whispered to, to just be able to forget everything, stop thinking, and _feel_. She pushed herself up, stepping out of bed and pulling on her clothes quickly, but not hurriedly. Leaving the room quietly, careful not wake him, she pulled the door softly behind her and paused to listen for any sounds of telltale movement. She wanted some peace and quiet for a while, to reflect.

She was distracted, however, by a soft breeze taking up around her ankles and chilling her bare feet. Little bits of dust caught at her toes and tickled her skin as they were blown, but looking around she could find no obvious source of the draft.

Turning, she caught the sight of a sudden bluster begin to attack the leaded window at the far end of the landing, leaves and specks of dirt slamming into the glass on the outside and holding for a second under the turbulence before being sent skittering across the panes and away out of view. Lara stood, staring, as the wind got stronger, more debris being thrown at the window faster and faster, the sound of strong gusts whistling within the inset architecture of the windowed wall.

Suddenly, the glass gave way, shattering inwards with deadly shards hurtling through the air towards Lara. Letting out a small cry of shock she instinctively shielded her face with her arms and fell back as she felt the sting of dozens of shallow cuts slash across her skin. The wind surged around her, almost knocking her over, and she squinted into the dusty currents. A feeble vase on a side table was knocked over and it rolled across the empty wooden tabletop before falling to the floor, a large chunk of the rim breaking off.

She was being attacked again.

Kurtis appeared at her side, mussed hair plastered around his face by the strong gusts as he grabbed her arm to get her attention and crooked his own near his eyes to shield them from the rushing air.

"Are you ok?" he shouted at her over the noise, and she nodded, struggling to look at him in the path of the wind. "Where's the Chirugai?" he questioned. "You hid it, where did you put it?"

"Upstairs!" Lara hollered back. "I hid it in one of the wardrobes in some blankets!"

"Call it to you," Kurtis instructed. "This is a demon attack, we need the Chirugai."

Still under the ever strengthening attack, Lara stared into his eyes for a moment, urging her to do as he instructed, before screwing her own shut and trying to concentrate enough to visualise the weapon bursting out of the wardrobe upstairs and winging its way swiftly towards her in rescue. Frustratingly, she felt no connection and saw no results. She tried again, wrapping her arms tightly around her head to give herself some feeling of shelter and detachment to increase her focus, but she just couldn't do it and she was afraid that there just wasn't time to keep trying.

"I can't!" she called back to Kurtis. "I just can't do it!" She caught a glimpse of worry on his face but before it could become anything more a sudden blast of air knocked her off her feet, sending her crashing back against the side table and crying out first in surprise and then in pain as the ornate table leg caught her bluntly on her spine.

She clawed at the carpet uselessly, looking up to see Kurtis holding tightly to the railing of the open landing with one hand to stop himself from being knocked back and sent bowling down the stairs, whilst he pushed forwards against the storm and extended one strong arm towards the upward staircase.

Howling with exertion, he forced his body to fight against the turbulence whilst his mind and hand called out for the weapon that Lara had secreted out of reach, and then, riding the currents effortlessly and catapulted along on their tides, the Chirugai shot around the corner from the enclosed stairs and slammed into Kurtis' outstretched palm, his fingers snatching at the sheath.

Faceless and unreadable, the winds seemed to have no emotional reaction to the disc's arrival, but they sped up nonetheless, swirling around in circles and pinning Lara to the legs of the small table where she still lay on the floor, curled protectively and fighting to see through the blinding dust.

"Here!" Kurtis screamed over the deafening noise. The Chirugai came spinning towards her, blades travelling vertically and cutting their way through the winds as it hurtled across the short distance between them and, reacting quickly, Lara snatched it out of the air. Seeming to understand her lack of experience, the blades on the disc retracted sharply of their own accord, saving Lara from cutting herself deeply as the outreach proved to be a position that she couldn't maintain under the onslaught, and she fell forwards onto her chest, the Chirugai beneath her, almost as soon as she had caught it.

A cry caught her attention and her head snapped up, a gasp of horror snatched away from her mouth before it could even sound. Kurtis had lost his grip on the banisters and stumbled backwards, losing his balance at the top of the stairs, and was now falling backwards with no hope of saving himself. With a thump that could be heard even over the noise of the attack, he landed on the steps and began to tumble down, thankfully having the skill and sense of presence to kick his legs to the side so that he began to roll down on his side rather than head over heels.

"Kurtis!" Lara screamed, horrified.

A small mercy, the flight curved around as it descended and so Kurtis fell only a few steps before colliding with the wall, hitting it headfirst and stopping in a crumpled heap with limbs worryingly awry.

Lara looked back towards the source of the gale, determination and anger written equally on her features. There had to be a way to defeat the storm, and she would find it.

Of course! The _eye of the storm_ – maybe that would work. Growling as dust and dirt was flung painfully into her eyes, the table leg digging uncomfortably into the crook of her arm as she anchored herself to its solid construction, Lara searched for a small element of calm. There! Was that it? It was difficult to tell but there seemed to be a nucleus, clear of debris and deceptively serene.

She took one look at the Chirugai, almost offering it encouragement, and tossed it into the air. Staring with squinted eyes, she fixed her gaze on the eye, determined not to lose it, and called out to the Chirugai with composed telepathy to cut it through.

The blades sliced the air from side to side, spinning through mercilessly.

A squealing howl filled Lara's head, making her scream out as she pressed her hands to her ears and buried her face in the floor. Almost imploding, the atmosphere suddenly seemed to suck itself inwards, leaves and strands of hair that were previously blowing away from the window now getting pulled towards it and a growing pitch of whistling wind rising to a crescendo before instantly stopping.

Lara's panting and the soft patter of dead leaves falling to the carpet filled the silence. Slowly, she got to her knees and then to her feet, steadying herself a moment before hurrying to Kurtis. He was already coming round, groaning in a way that was suggestive more of annoyance than pain, and rolling onto his back.

"Are you alright?" Lara asked earnestly, worried. She crouched beside him, helping him to sit up. His hand went to his head and he winced.

"Yeah," he sighed, "yeah I'm fine." Another sigh and then, "Oh man. I'm ok. Really." Uncertainly he began to get to his feet, and again Lara assisted him.

"I'm gonna take a shower, ok?" he laughed, mild pain obvious on his face. He lightly squeezed her hand where it rested on his side, a sign of reassurance, and tottered off down the stairs, groaning dramatically.

Slightly bemused but trusting in his ability to assess his own injuries, Lara watched him go with a slight smile of amusement. She wasn't afraid to admit to herself that seeing him fall had aroused an intense desire to run immediately to his side. She'd resisted, of course, logical and practical as always, knowing that she'd do them both a far larger favour by leaving him to take his chances whilst she dealt with the immediate problem. Still, she realised that her concern was a natural progression of the raw attraction they'd both experienced in their initial meetings in Paris, and an emotional state that she rarely let herself reach. She watched from over the banister as her last glimpses of him saw him disappearing underneath the raised staircase towards one of the bathrooms, mussed hair spiked and tangled below her. Deep inside, she knew that there was a good chance that the man from Paris was lying dead in a morgue, but it just seemed…

His appearance, his voice, his touch, his taste…it was all so easy to believe. And after all, truth was subjective, wasn't it?

Something caught her eye, a shadow or a movement in her peripheral vision; she couldn't tell, but it seemed as if something had just gone into the library at the bottom of the stairs. Looking around for the Chirugai, she saw it embedded in the wall once more. Wincing as she pulled it from the wallpaper leaving two deep gouges, she smoothed the splinters and torn paper over and hoped that Kurtis wouldn't notice. Then, moving quietly and slowly, she made her way to the library.

She slowly reached out to the slightly ajar door and then gave it a hefty push. It swung open easily revealing a silent, still and empty room. Lara frowned to herself, certain that she'd seen something. Oh well, she thought to herself as she wandered in to the chilly space, it was an unfamiliar house, it was probably just a trick of the light through one of the windows that she wasn't used to.

She loved libraries, especially private ones. There was so much to be discovered in terms of knowledge, books, personal notes and often little ornaments and curiosities. She hadn't had the time to properly investigate it the day before but since Kurtis was in the only bathroom that had been readied for use, she might as well take a look around whilst she was waiting. Trailing her fingers across the leather spines of the hundreds of books lined up on shelves all over the modestly sized room, Lara scanned the titles for something of interest.

_The Wasp Factory_; a thin illustrated book containing only one of Edgar Allan Poe's works, _The Raven_; a novelisation of _Jacob's Ladder_. Finding herself leaving the fiction titles, Lara's fingers strayed onto several books all of dark red leather with branded titles and a familiar symbol at the base of each spine – Lux Veritatis books.

Curious, she pulled one at random from the shelf and flicked through until she found the beginning of a chapter somewhere in the middle.

It seemed to be a text book, almost, or perhaps a log of the Order's history. Already reading, she absently felt her way into one of the overstuffed and threadbare armchairs and sat down.

_Chapter 6 – The Chirugai_

_Like the naturally formed Periapt Shards, the Chirugai's origin lies in the Cradle Of The Order. Forged by the first Knights from the metals of the crater, the weapon is unique and one of the few blades capable of killing both coherent and incoherent demons. Due to its link with the Cradle, the Chirugai may injure the Nephilim or, if cutting through their hearts, kill them. The Chirugai is wielded only by the most senior of the Lux Veritatis, with whom it creates a psychic link which allows the intelligence of the user to supplement the limited consciousness of the weapon in order to create intelligent and somewhat independent behaviour._

"Lara, I'm done." Kurtis' voice sounded from the lounge, interrupting her before she could move onto the more detailed entries past the initial chapter summary. For some reason, perhaps an irrational fear that all was not as it seemed, she didn't want to be discovered with the book, so she quickly replaced it on the shelf and hid behind the library door. Peeking round, she saw Kurtis, apparently unaware of her whereabouts, slowly climbing the stairs as he towelled his hair dry. Silently, she slipped out into the lounge behind him and tiptoed towards the bathroom.

In Paris, a night owl reporter sat intently staring at his computer screen as his fingers jabbed at the keyboard. A mock up of his article's appearance slowly grew in length on the monitor as he wrote, columned sentences stringing out as the story flowed easily, a wide grin on his face as he penned what was possibly the most sensational and unarguable journalism of his career.

The title flickered in large bold font.

_'Louvre Break-In Perpetrator Revealed As Lady Croft'_

There was a click and something hard pressed into the back of his neck.

"Monsieur LeFebvre," a man said from behind him, "It's probably best for everyone if you don't publish that story." The man reached forward with his free hand and closed the work without saving it, navigating through the files to delete it before gathering up the written notes off the desk and removing them. "You should forget about that particular piece of news and give your editor something a little safer…perhaps there are some stocks that are falling, or a business has just declared some redundancies. Perhaps, if you prefer, there might be an unsolved shooting to cover." The gun was removed. "Good evening." Without another word, Mr Ricci left the reporter's office.


	9. Running

**AN: It's been a long time since I updated this but I'd like to finish it so, as I did with Partners in Crime, I'm going to see if I can't pick this back up, dust it off, and get it updated regularly until it's complete. In the time since the last chapter was uploaded, the KTEB group have confirmed with the writer of AOD, Murti Schofield, that a lot of additional information in Kurtis' bio that was originally thought to be fan-created was, in fact, official. It wasn't well known because it was originally only published on one of the regional official TR sites in Europe. It was translated into English and put out there, but no-one really believed it. So, Kurtis' mother was really called Marie Cornel, his father's surname was really Heissturm, and there were canon events prior to AOD. The Last Candle is now 'wrong' in many ways but I'll keep it as is. Some of my backstory marries with the official one, some doesn't. I guess it's now 'AU'!**

_Running_

"You...," Lara began uncertainly over breakfast, "you don't seem to be particularly worried about events."

Kurtis paused with a forkful of hash brown halfway to his mouth and raised an eyebrow. "Should I be?"

"Well..."

"Uh oh. Look, Lara, I feel an affinity with you -"

"No! God, no. The storm, the wind, whatever it was..."

"Oh. Oh right!"

The embarrassment had them talking over each other and they stopped, both smiling sheepishly.

"That, huh?" Kurtis said. "Yeah, I guess I'm kind of used to it. I forget that most people wouldn't be."

"You're used to it?"

"Demon Hunter," he said, by way of explanation. "These things follow me around."

"They do?"

"Lux Veritatis. Goes with the job."

Lara was still a bit wary about the whole thing, especially now it had sunk in. It seemed like she was the one who'd been getting followed around by such oddities, had been since leaving the Strahov. Putai, sentient smoke, instantly rotting attackers, whispers, winds... She'd seen such things before, she knew they existed, but to suddenly be some sort of target for them...it had started before she'd found Kurtis again, it wasn't likely that she was just –

"Caught in the crossfire?"

"What?" Kurtis had startled her from her thoughts with an apparent feat of mind reading. Now, he was eyeing her.

"This been happening to you for a few days now?"

Lara swallowed. "Yes."

He levelled his gaze with her. "Don't worry. It's not you they're after, it's the Chirugai."

"They are?" She was surprised.

"Yes." He returned to wolfing down his breakfast as if he hadn't eaten in a week.

"Why?"

"It's a demon killer and demons don't exactly have it in their nature to play nice with each other."

Lara, seeing him tuck in to his meal and suddenly remembering her own, took a hasty mouthful of the scrambled egg she'd had balanced on her fork for some moments, and then continued.

"They want it to fight each other?"

"Sure they do. Congress has nothing on Hell when it comes to power struggles."

"Now that does surprise me," Lara said dryly.

Kurtis quirked a smile. Then, he took the one remaining bite of his breakfast and, still chewing, stood to clear his things from the table. Turning away with his plate he said, "You'll be free of it when you pass the Chirugai back."

Lara frowned.

"Oh, and, by the way – it was great."

Later, they headed into town, and whilst Kurtis went to take care of more practicalities with regards to getting the house back up and running, Lara went to buy a few clothes. She'd been woefully under equipped in that department since the whole sorry affair had started in Paris and still was, despite buying a couple of items at the airport before leaving France, as soon as she'd been safe to use her credit cards again. What she had was starting to get rather ripe and most it was wholly unsuitable for the weather anyway, not to mention the fact that she had no idea how much longer she'd be away from home.

She chose a few items, took them to the changing rooms, and began to peel off her dirty, snug jeans. As she did so, something popped out of the pocket and bounced on the floor with a soft noise. She stooped, picked it up, and recognised the small unexplained rock she'd found in the house. She'd forgotten about it.

"Where did you come from?" she asked it rhetorically, examining its crumbly texture.

Then she looked up. And she gasped and took a quick step back.

The previously clean mirror had been breathed on, creating a mist, and the mist had been written in. It had been written in in clear, simple strokes made by someone's finger.

'4 – 6 – 13'

Lara stared at it, not understanding, feeling exposed.

"Putai?" she whispered, looking around. "Putai, is that you?"

There was no answer.

Her mouth pursed. "Damn it," she muttered angrily, and she erased the message with a harsh wipe of her palm, and roughly pulled on her new clothes.

Outside the town's small independent coffee shop where she was meeting Kurtis a few minutes later, grey clouds chased overhead and Kurtis trotted down the street towards her, bags of food in his hands.

"Get what you needed?"

Lara nodded, smiling, and held up her bags. "Yes."

She looked bothered somehow so he eyed her curiously and asked, "Everything ok?"

"Yes. Everything's fine." She gave him another bright smile.

He accepted it with a shrug and, laden with groceries and shopping, they took a taxi back to the house. On the journey, Kurtis slung an arm about Lara's shoulders, but she was too distracted by the message on the mirror to acknowledge it.

It started raining hard before they had finished the journey, a heavy, cold, winter rain that dripped from Lara's hair into her eyes and pooled in the crevices of their bags. Leaving the taxi at the gates, they ran for the front door, heads down, the barren gardens around them being battered by the downpour. Reaching shelter, the door was shut tightly behind them and Kurtis let out a breath of relief.

"Weather sucks 'round here." He slicked the wet hair from his eyes, kicked off his soaked boots, and went to the bathroom for a towel, leaving Lara in the hall, apparently oblivious to her inner turmoil.

She couldn't get the image of the misted numbers out of her mind.

Four, six, thirteen?

What was that? A code? And who did it come from? Putai? One of those demons? Should she even be listening to it, whatever it was?

She didn't know, she didn't think she would know without help, and she didn't feel able to share it.

Putai's words echoed in her head.

_'Didn't you kill Karel?'_

A sudden anger rose over her.

"Yes I did," she spat to the silence, and then she stormed off.

Kurtis was just disappearing into the kitchen as she stepped into the living room, a towel slung around his shoulders and the bags of groceries in his hands. Lara flopped onto the sofa and began to look through her purchases.

She was just about to go and change into some of them so that she could get some laundry done at last when there was a light thud from the library at the bottom of the staircase. She looked up, attracted by the noise.

Then, resolutely, she headed up the stairs towards the bedroom to change.

When she was halfway up, there was a click behind her.

With her hand stilled on the banister, she stopped, closed her eyes, took a breath. And then she turned around.

The light had been turned on in the library.

She marched back down, stuck her head through the doorway, watched impassively as a book eased itself off the shelf and tumbled to the floor, turned off the light, shut the door tightly, and went to change.

It was whilst she was pulling her new sweater over her head that she heard a light rustling. She quickly finished bringing the top down to her shoulders and glanced around, wary instincts kicking in at activity going on around her whilst she was unable to see. At first, she didn't notice anything in the unfamiliar surroundings of Kurtis' overfilled childhood bedroom, but then she turned to face the other way and spotted it.

An open book on the water-marked dresser.

She stared at it, rage bubbling up inside of her. Almost shaking with anger, she picked it up and looked at the cover. It was one of the Lux Veritatis history books, volume four, open to chapter six. She couldn't stop herself, it was an involuntary mental connection, an unwilling physical movement. She scanned through for paragraph thirteen.

_The Chirugai cannot be destroyed except by the fires of the crater from which it was forged. Due to the invocation of the ancient magics used during its creation, it is impervious to any other forces, and cannot even be marked by diamond. Due to its great power and indestructibility, it is vital that it be closely guarded. The Chirugai must only be entrusted to those worthy and its return to the fires of the crater must be considered to be preferable to the likely possibility that the weapon could be passed to an enemy through duress._

And there, at the beginning of the next paragraph, too plainly written for Lara to miss, was the next point.

_It is written that the Lux Veritatis will one day be extinguished. The Chirugai must also be extinguished in that event. Indeed, this is the reason for the Law Of One._

Reading no further, Lara snapped the book shut and hurled it at the wall with a strangled scream of frustration.

"Leave me alone!"

There was no apology or answer in the silence that ensued, until Kurtis' voice floated up the stairs.

"Lara? Everything ok?"

Lara looked to the stairs through the open door, quickly composing herself and smoothing down her sweater before hurrying out.

"Yes, everything's fine, thank you," she said, trotting down the stairs and tidying the stray hair around her face. "I just lost my temper with a stubborn tag on my top."

She passed Kurtis and went straight on into the kitchen. "Shall I start dinner?"

Kurtis shrugged inwardly and followed.

The dinner that Lara started was considered and delicious, drawing on the skills she'd been taught at her prestigious school. Vegetables were neatly chopped and expertly roasted, pasta was mixed with just the right amount of sauce, bread was buttered, flavoured with herbs that had survived in the abandoned garden, and toasted. Still cooking, it looked and smelled delicious. Kurtis seemed pleasantly surprised.

He lifted the lid of a simmering saucepan and sniffed. "Not bad, Croft, not bad at all."

Lara smiled proudly and turned to him from where she'd been washing a serving platter she'd brought out from the cupboards. "We've both been through the wringer lately. I thought we deserved something nice."

Kurtis considered something for a moment, and then smiled conspiratorially. "Back in ten." He left the room.

When dinner was ready, cooked to perfection, vegetables and bread piled on the serving platter, pasta presented in a serving bowl, Lara began to take it through to the lounge. Kurtis, however, was nowhere to be seen, and he'd not cleared the coffee table like she'd asked him. She stopped, confused for a moment.

"In here, Lara," came a voice, and she turned towards it to see a previously closed room opened up, flickering with candlelight against the pale evening light filtering in through dust caked windows.

It was the dining room, and the great mahogany table that must have easily seated twenty people had been laid with a white cloth, candelabras, and two place settings. Kurtis was waiting for her at the head of the table, grinning smugly.

"Very nice," Lara returned, pleased.

He picked up a bottle and two crystal wine glasses, holding them up to show her. "I raided the cellar. A 1978 red bordeaux. Label on the rack said it was a good one."

Lara set down the vegetables and took the bottle to examine it. "Only one way to find out," she said, eyes sparkling.

They brought through the rest of the meal, and then Kurtis pulled out a chair.

"M'lady."

The object of his chivalry laughed and moved to accept the seat, the both of them laughing louder as she brushed past one of the heavy curtains and disturbed a thick layer of dust that clouded up and made her cough. Thanks to the dust sheets that had been laid out, the table and chairs were about adequate for dining, but the place was still filthy.

It made them giggle, neither of them that averse to it. Lara had slaughtered jungle fowl and cooked them over open flames, Kurtis had eaten in Middle Eastern prisons. A little dust was no problem.

They poured the wine, took food off each other's plates, shared stories and jokes, and left the washing up.

Lara awoke just as the grandfather clock in the hall struck one. Beside her, Kurtis was still fast asleep.

It seemed lighter on the other side of the ajar door than it should have been. For a moment she thought that they'd forgotten some of the lamps on their tipsy and stumbling kiss to the bedroom, but then she heard faint noises. Cutlery and crockery clinking together, the soft murmur of voices, the sharper and louder sound of one or two raised harshly above them, someone sobbing...

Puzzled and concerned, Lara sat up, letting the covers fall from her. The cold night air immediately hit her nakedness and she shivered. Pulling on the pyjamas she'd bought, ignoring the still intact price tags, she tip toed on to the landing.

Lights were blazing in the lounge and she went down towards them. The stairs were clean, not dusty like earlier, and the lounge was warm and lived in. The air didn't smell musty and the pile of dust sheets was gone, never having been there. Scattered around were boxes and suitcases and bags. Tell tale marks on the tables and sideboard suggested trinkets and photos had been packed.

All the noise she'd been hearing was coming from the dining room, so she picked her way through the luggage and gingerly slipped in through the half-open door.

Sixteen people sat around the dinner table, a great banquet laid out in front of them, candles burning all around the room. The diners were dressed in mid 1990s fashions, and whilst some devoured the food from plates piled high, others seemed unable to bring themselves to even start. Several conversations layered on top of each other, some more animated than others. A woman cried. No-one seemed aware of Lara's presence.

The arguing that she'd heard was coming from two men, one at the head of the table and the other to his left.

"The Chirugai needs to be destroyed."

"It stays with me."

"You, who's going off alone. There is absolutely no insurance that you'll be able to pass it on before it's too late. When you're killed -"

"How dare you speak with such certainty of our failure?"

"I'm being realistic."

"You're aiding it, with all this pessimism and talk of throwing away the one thing that can destroy the Nephilim."

"It can destroy a lot more than that if it gets into the wrong hands. It might not co-operate but it can be forced enough."

"The Law Of One is quite clear. It's destroyed by the last member of the Order when it's passed to them."

"Yes, and when we lock those garden gates behind us tonight, you might as well be the last one. We're running like rats to be picked off. You won't be able to pass it on. And what about the Shards?"

"I will separate the Shards and I will pass on the Chirugai."

"How? To who?"

The man at the head of the table lowered his gaze and then looked slyly to the crying woman at his right.

"Marie will be telling me of her whereabouts when she's settled. Before it's too late, I'll pass the Chirugai and one shard on to her. Marie," he said, turning to her, and then he hesitated as he realised the entire table had fallen silent at his revelation. They were all looking at him, shocked, hurt, angry. He looked around the room and then sat up straighter, his face becoming closed off as he moved to exercise his authority as the head, the House Adept. "Marie, you won't hold them yourself, it's too dangerous. You'll pass them to Kurtis."

The table erupted into protestations, people standing, pointing, dinner forgotten. "You said none of us were to know the whereabouts of anybody else!"

"You're separating husbands and wives, siblings, friends, but you get to keep in contact with _your_ wife?"

"You said it was too dangerous for anyone to know!"

"What's good for the goose, Konstantin!"

Konstantin stood suddenly, his chair falling over behind him, his gaze sweeping hard across the group.

Everyone fell silent.

"I'm separating you for your own safety. If I know where Marie is, _she _is in danger. This is a danger I _don't_ put on the rest of you. But I ask her to assume it, for the good of the Order. I must have somebody to pass the Shards and the Chirugai onto. And Marie will pass them onto our son."

Slowly, he righted his chair and sat back down, pointedly returning to his meal. Beside him, Marie sniffed and wiped away tears, trying to calm herself. She had obviously already known the plan, or at least the first part.

"Kurtis left us, Konstantin," she said in a small voice.

"And that's precisely why I'm choosing him to receive the relics."

"And then he will be a target!"

Her statement had been a shout, her face suddenly filled with rage. The atmosphere in the room changed.

"And a target who can't defend himself properly," someone furthered. "He didn't finish anywhere near enough training, Konstantin. He might have the right blood but he still may not be able to use the Chirugai. And this time, with the weapon in his hands, he won't be able to walk away. Its presence will sing out to Eckhardt like fire in a blackout. He'll be hunted, even more mercilessly than the rest of us."

Konstantin kept his eyes down.

"He's lived free for a few years now. He hasn't had his strength sapped like we have. I think he's probably our best hope. And besides, I'd like him to come home."

Marie's tears started flowing again.

"Now, come on," Konstantin said, his voice strong again. "This is our last meal together. We meant it to be an occasion, and it will be. Eat. Talk. If nothing else, get your strength up while you can. Later, we run."


	10. A Time To Go

_A Time To Go_

Lara climbed onto the bed next to the still-sleeping Kurtis and shook him awake. Roused more sharply than he clearly would have preferred, he jumped, looked confused for a moment, and then looked annoyed.

He squinted up at Lara's face hovering over him and then shut his eyes again.

"What time is it?"

"Two o'clock."

Kurtis groaned. "Two? What the hell?"

Lara repositioned herself so she was sat up, facing the groggy heap in front of her, and partially on top of it. She held an open book in one hand.

"What's the Law Of One?" she asked.

Kurtis frowned, trying to wake up enough to search his memories.

"Huh?"

"The Law Of One."

"I don't know. Never heard of it."

"You should know. It's Lux Veritatis law."

"I told you, I cut class."

"It says here," Lara said, ignoring him and reading from the book, "that the Law Of One is a fundamental rule of the Lux Veritatis governing the stewardship of the Chirugai. The last Lux Veritatis, upon being given the aforementioned weapon, is supposed to destroy it by returning it to the fires of the crater from whence it came, to ensure that it can't fall into the wrong hands."

Kurtis rubbed his eyes. "Screwed up there then, didn't I?"

"Quite."

"Seriously, you're up at 2am reading musty literature written by a bunch of knights with sticks up their asses?"

"I couldn't sleep," Lara said wryly.

"After I tried so hard to wear you out?" A mischievous look crept onto his face as he seemed to suddenly become aware of her position, and his hands crept onto her waist. "Do I need to try a little...harder?"

Lara raised her eyebrows, laughing at him. "How vulgar."

"You can be pretty vulgar yourself." His hands rubbed up and down her sides. "Not that I'm complaining."

"Kurtis, this is serious. You were meant to destroy the Chirugai before you died. You didn't. That must be why it took to me, it must have known that you trusted me. I must have been chosen to take it to the crater. But now you're back -"

He let go of her and just lay there, unimpressed with the turn of conversation.

"Lara, I am not destroying that thing."

"You're meant to."

"What, according to some law? I need it. To stay alive."

"Well, you must have managed before. Your friend Richard said strange things were always happening to you in the Legion and you didn't have it then."

"What would we have done without it in that indoor storm yesterday?"

"I thought that only showed up _because_ of the Chirugai."

Kurtis took hold of her waist again, only this time to push her off himself.

"It's my decision, I'm not destroying it, end of. Good night, Lara."

He turned over and pointedly ground his face into his pillow. Lara, back on her own side of the bed, snapped the book shut and sighed.

When the sun had risen and she'd had her fill of sleep, Lara sat alone in the empty bedroom where she'd hidden the Chirugai. The weapon was in her hands, dormant and sheathed, a passive lump of metal. She gazed at it, tossing it gently, shaking her head.

"You've yet to return it."

Gasping, Lara looked around, only to find Putai standing there, staff in her hand, robes spread out around her.

"Putai." The greeting was flat. "Here to give me more uselessly cryptic instructions?"

Putai smiled, seemingly sympathetic, and drew closer.

"I told you to find the Lux Veritatis."

Lara gestured to her surroundings. "And I have done."

"I think it's more that they found you. But no matter. We have both told you what you must do."

"Destroy this." Lara tapped the Chirugai with the fingers of one hand, none too happy with being its new owner.

"Will you return it to him so that he may do it?"

Lara looked up at her advisor, her eyes pleading. "I want to trust him."

"But you can't."

"I can't trust anyone!" She stood, throwing the sleeping Chirugai hard to the bed. "God, Putai! Am I really that jaded? Or am I just scared?" She sneered inwardly.

With Lara turned away from her, Putai took one unseen step towards her, worry on her face. Then, her expression became more determined.

"It is not just vital that the weapon is kept from those who would misuse it, it is also the wish of the Lux Veritatis. They are owed that."

Putai had gone again; Lara knew it without turning.

Exhausted, she swept up the Chirugai and, looking at it one last time, coaxed it to unsheath its blades. Then she withdrew them again, and set off.

Outside at the water butts, Kurtis paused in his efforts to plug the leaking piping when he sensed someone behind him. He looked over his shoulder.

"Hi."

Lara smiled faintly. "Hi." She held out the Chirugai. "I want you to destroy it."

Kurtis downed his tools and stood. "I already told you-"

"It's the right thing to do," she interrupted. "It's the smart thing to do. And I think you'd feel good about yourself if you paid your respects this way."

"Paid my respects?" Kurtis repeated, almost laughing.

"Please. I'll return this to you, but let's go to the crater. Let's go to Lake Lappajarvi."

He eyed her. "Ok," he said, almost calculating.

He held out his hands.

Lara just looked at him. "Promise me," she said shortly.

Kurtis raised an eyebrow. "I promise," he said, "that we'll go to Lake Lappajarvi. I do not promise that you'll persuade me to destroy the Chirugai when we get there, and I do not promise that I won't persuade you to agree with me."

Lara scoffed. "We'll see."

And then, taking a deep breath, Lara calmed herself, closed her eyes, and placed the weapon in his palms. Apprehensively, she pulled her own hands away.

A grin spread across Kurtis' face, his gaze fixed on the Chirugai, but as he attempted to awaken it and nothing happened, the smile faded, becoming instead anger.

"No," he growled.

Lara was taken aback. "What's wrong?"

"That's not good enough," he said, his breathing getting deeper as frustration began to show. "It's not responding to me. You haven't given it to me."

"I did give it to you!"

"Not in your heart," he spat, his voice rising along with the Chirugai, almost as if he was raising it to her strike her. "You don't trust me."

"I do trust you!"

"No you don't!" he roared, and with that he turned and hurled the relic, sending it tumbling end over end through the air. The blades extended with a jolt, with none of the smoothness that Lara had seen before, wrenched from their housings, turning it into an erratically spinning, clunky shadow of itself. With a thud, it became embedded in the rotting wooden sidings of the house.

"That," Kurtis accused, jabbing a finger towards it, "is not connected to me."

Lara shook her head defensively. "Well what do you want me to do?"

"Get packing," he snarled, turning and stalking away. "We're going to Lake Lappajarvi." To himself, more quietly, he added, "And we'll see whether it's the Chirugai or you who gets thrown in."

Shaken, shaking, Lara stared after him. Then the Chirugai began to glow, plucked itself from the wall, flew towards her and, with a clarity sharpened by fury, she blindly held out a hand and let her charge drop right into it as the blades dropped back inside.

The darkness of the abandoned bedroom that night was pushed back as the door was quietly opened and soft light fell through from the hall, backlighting the figure who slipped inside. Lara ignored them.

They crossed to the bed and knelt by its head, eye level with her.

"You not coming in my room tonight?"

"I hardly think so."

Kurtis sighed and dropped his gaze. "I'm sorry, Lara. I really am. I...lost it. I just want the Chirugai back, I was frustrated..."

"No need," Lara retorted slowly and clearly, "to take it out on me like that."

Kurtis silently agreed.

"Where have you been hiding all day?"

"I went for a walk."

"That was some walk. You were gone hours. I had to make my own dinner."

The joke failed.

"Why is it so important to you that I destroy it?"

Lara shrugged and turned over.

"Getting rid of the Chirugai will not make me normal. It won't stop-"

"It's not that," Lara said snippily.

"Ok," Kurtis said. "Then let me try asking why you don't trust me."

Lara laughed bitterly. "You are kidding."

"No. I'm not."

She looked over her shoulder at him. "Well, I suppose you haven't heard all my stories."

"Stories of..."

"Lies, betrayal, and villains, mostly."

Kurtis smiled, a little amused. "I'm not Karel. I told you that."

Lara turned back to him.

"Just how were you brought back, Kurtis?"

He shook his head, shrugged. "I dunno."

"Well, all right, not 'how'. What happened?"

"What happened?"

"What was it like? What do you remember?"

"I remember dying...painfully. And then I woke up again."

"Where?"

"Where?" He stumbled, and for a moment, she thought he was avoiding the question. "Well, here," he said after a moment, as if it should have been obvious. "Home base. Right where I needed to be to receive you."

Lara gazed at him in the darkness. After a pause she said, "The gates were locked from the outside when I arrived to find you already here."

"Well we just explained that one, didn't we? Lara, don't ask me how this resurrection thing works. I don't know. Maybe that body you left is still there, buried somewhere, incinerated, maybe it was healed and transported and it's the same skin I'm in now, I can't say. All I can say is that I look like me, I feel like me, I am me, and I am alive."

He leaned in, brought his lips to hers as he climbed quietly onto the bed. "I am alive," he repeated.

The next morning, they rose before sunrise to leave for the airport. Kurtis went first, dropping a kiss on the sleepy Lara's forehead and telling her he'd start cooking breakfast, and then Lara followed a few minutes later. As she rounded a corner on the dimly lit landing, she came upon an unexpected figure. She stopped dead, surprised. It was Konstantin, his coat on, his bag at his feet, looking as he had at that last dinner she'd been shown. He was staring at the photograph of the House's members where it still hung on the wall. He reached out to take it down, but then he halted, and let his arms drop. His face was sad, and tears were in his eyes. Quickly, he picked up his bag, flicked off the lights, and hurried away down the stairs, leaving the picture behind.

Mouth parted slightly in a sorrowful wonder, Lara turned the lights back on and looked at the sixteen dead.


	11. Helping Hands

_Helping Hands_

Their transatlantic flight was out of Chicago, bound for Helsinki. With their journey into Salt Lake City and their flight from there, they'd already been travelling for hours. Somewhere over the oceans, Lara shifted uncomfortably in her seat, pushed her feet against her hand luggage stowed under the chair in front of her and taking up part of her foot room, and cursed economy class. She'd usually choose at least business, but when seats weren't available, no amount of money would help you. Her calves ached.

"I'm going to stretch my legs," Lara started to say to Kurtis beside her, but cut herself short when she found he'd fallen asleep. She rolled her eyes and got up. It looked like she wouldn't even be getting any conversation to pass the time.

She was towards the end of the aisle when a woman rose from her seat and stepped out, blocking Lara's path. Her lips were pouted nastily, a scar running clear across them, and her eyes held a look of disgust. Her face, along with her spiky hair and biker-style clothes, left her looking rather like she was more used to confronting people in alley ways.

"Excuse me," said Lara politely, moving to gently push past the woman.

The woman pushed back with a belligerant air and Lara halted, a little surprised, and her temper igniting.

"Excuse me...Sian," she said, reading the name on the woman's necklace condescendingly. Their eyes locked challengingly.

"Where is it?" Sian asked.

"Where is what?"

"The Chirugai. I want it."

Lara shook her head. "I don't know what you're talking about. Now get out of my way."

Sian pushed her again and fixed Lara with a look. "I want it."

Lara laughed in amusement. "Are you really going to start something here? On an aeroplane full of people and probably an armed air marshall?"

Lara was punched in the face, inhumanly hard. She fell, banging her elbow on a seat and lay there for a moment, stunned. Nobody else reacted.

Shaking her head to clear her vision and her mind, Lara got to her feet and took a fighting stance.

Sian let another hit fly. Ready that time, Lara blocked it and hit back with one of her own, landing it on the left side of her attacker's face. She barely seemed to register it, instead smoothly going for a punch to Lara's stomach, then another, before kneeing her hard.

Lara staggered back, falling against a nearby passenger, gasping in pain, winded. She looked at the person she'd collapsed over and then, in amazement and horror, around the cabin. Everyone seemed almost frozen, moving so slowly that it was barely noticeable, and the man she'd hit didn't seem affected at all. Were they slowed down? Was she moving faster? What was happening? She looked up at Sian, horribly awed. The smirk she received back was chilling.

"Humans. They're so easy to control. And so easy to subdue."

White exploded in Lara's vision as her head was rammed into the armrest, and then she was shoved fully to the floor.

Sian stepped back, and pulled a gun. Lara's eyes went wide.

Instinctively, not thinking of what might happen, Lara kicked up a leg and rammed her foot into Sian's wrist, sending the gun jerking just as it was fired.

The shot was deafening in the confined space, but almost immediately drowned out by the ear shattering high pitched sound of whistling wind, air being sucked violently out of the hole that had been formed in the rear door.

Lara drew in a horrified breath, slammed her hands over her ears and curled up in the aisle, eyes screwing shut. With a frightening shudder and an explosive bang, the door was ripped from its housing, shooting out into the atmosphere, streaking forty thousand feet down to earth.

The oxygen masks dropped, the passengers sat there, moving dreamily, oblivious to their danger.

Fighting on through the turmoil, against her impossibly strong attacker, Lara struggled to hook a foot around Sian's ankle and bring her down.

Sian simply dropped to her knee, letting the fall bring her closer to Lara, and took hold of her collar. Then she stood, dragging Lara after her, and threw her to the door.

Lara screamed shortly, thinking she was being tossed out, but she landed hard on her front instead, only her neck and head out of the doorway.

Sian was on top of her immediately, a hand on the back of her head, shoving it down over the edge, the other holding down one of Lara's arms.

Lara's cry was stolen by the sky, her breathing in the struggle and the wind almost impossible.

It was what the demon wanted, the reason she was being pushed like that, but she had no choice. Lara had to call the Chirugai.

It tore through the side of her bag from where it was hidden, rode the currents effortlessly down the aisles and around the seats, went straight into Lara's free, flailing hand. If she'd had more practice, maybe she'd have been able to have it attack Sian from behind but she was too distracted, struggling too much, couldn't see.

Sian's mouth twisted into a parody of a smile at the arrival of the weapon. She freed Lara's head, and instead took hold of her wrist, banging her hand over and over again into the fuselage wall, trying to loosen the grip.

Lara let out a strangled scream, refused to let go.

The impact came again and again, bleeding her knuckles, bruising her fingers, intensifying the pain more and more.

A strong hand curled around Sian's hair and jerked her head back painfully, drawing a surprised and pained cry. It was pulled back further, and she let go of Lara to claw at the grip on her head. Her upper body freed, Lara pushed herself up and back inside the plane, gulping in a lungful of air gratefully. She tried to twist around enough to see what was happening, but couldn't, she could only hear the struggle.

One of her saviour's hands moved to Sian's throat and squeezed, and she tugged at it uselessly, unable to free herself, mouth gaping as she tried to breathe, her eyes wide. She scratched blindly towards his face and drew a snarl as she caught his temple, making him bleed.

"Bitch," he snarled. Lara started. Wasn't that Kurtis' voice? Had he not been caught with the other passengers?

There was a sickening crack as Sian's neck was snapped.

Immediately, Lara was back standing in the aisle, time moving normally, the door intact, the oxygen masks gone, Kurtis and Sian nowhere to be seen.

"Are you ok?" a woman's voice asked, clearly thinking Lara wasn't right in the head.

Lara pulled herself together, looking quickly to the lady standing next to her and looking back at her questioningly.

"I'm sorry," she managed. "I'm tired, I must have been away with the fairies for a moment."

"Then I could please get past?" the woman asked, unconcerned.

"Of course." Lara smiled sheepishly and stepped aside, letting the woman go before hurrying back to her seat. The man she'd fallen against was looking puzzled, nursing a rising bruise on his side. Kurtis was still sleeping, his head tipped to one side, but Lara was too concerned to think about that for the moment. She settled quickly down and snatched up her bag, rifling through it and letting out a sigh of relief when she saw the Chirugai packed safely under her other belongings. She closed her eyes for a long moment, calming herself, and then pushed her bag back under the seat and laid back into her chair, letting out another long breath.

Beside her, Kurtis stirred. His eyes fluttered open and he took in the sight of Lara, every inch the harassed traveller.

"I expected you to take long journeys in your stride, Croft."

Lara gave him a sideways look and then closed her eyes again. "Usually I do."

"Not used to being packed in with the cattle, huh?"

"I've been packed in with the cattle quite literally before now, thank you very much. I don't need first class and fully reclining seats, I'm not spoilt." She just very much preferred them when she was on a nine hour commercial flight, but she didn't say that.

Kurtis smirked affectionately, but then his smile faded.

"Are you ok? I get the feeling there's something you're not telling me."

Lara rolled her head to look at him. "I'm fine," she said after a moment, turning back to the front.

"No you're not."

Lara's composure faltered. She leaned into him to keep their conversation private. "I just got attacked again."

"Really?" Kurtis' eyes were flickering around, looking for evidence. "Are you ok?"

"You don't remember?"

"Er...no?"

She let out short, stressed breath. "You saved me. I thought."

"Did I?"

"It was strange. It was as if everyone else had been slowed down. And then this, this woman, she attacked me, she shot at me, the bullet blew the door out, she was ready to throw me out of the plane when she got what she wanted."

"The Chirugai."

"Yes. But then someone – I thought it was you, but I couldn't see, just hear - killed her, and immediately everything went back to the way it was. The door intact, everyone normal, you asleep... Except I definitely hurt." She placed a hand on her sore stomach.

Kurtis thought for a moment. "Temporal demon?"

"What?"

"Sounds a little like a temporal demon. They can mess around with time, slow things, separate things... sometimes deja vu isn't always deja vu, y'know?"

"Well, whatever it was," Lara said sourly and leaning back to rest, "I didn't like it."

"The Chirugai?" Kurtis asked, leaning back over towards her.

"It's safe."

"Good. What about you?"

"I'll be fine," Lara insisted, swatting him away. "I just wish I knew... could it have been you? And then you somehow forgot when everything got rewound?"

Kurtis shrugged. "Hey. I don't know everything. Maybe. The important thing is that you and the Chirugai are ok."

Lara swallowed. "The sooner we get to the lake, the better."

Kurtis nodded, and then sat back in his own seat and let his head fall back. Unseen by Lara, a little of his long hair dropped away from his face, revealing a bloodied scratch.

Finland was cold. It wasn't the first time Lara had visited the country in the wintertime, but it was still surprisingly cold. It was turning out to be a harsh winter, they said, and she and Kurtis were forced to stop in Helsinki to buy arctic coats. They took the train North, and hired a car to drive themselves the rest of the way to Lake Lappajarvi, where they rented a waterfront cabin and bought provisions from the nearby lakeside town.

It was quiet by night. Few people were visiting their holiday homes and fewer were venturing out. Lara sat, wrapped up in her coat and boots with a flask of hot tea, on the cabin veranda, the lake in front of her and the road behind her. Kurtis had seemed to have developed a new found enthusiasm for earthly pleasures since being brought back from the dead – or perhaps, she reflected, he had always been hedonistic – and was sleeping lazily in their large fluffy bed, stuffed with a gigantic supper of meat stew and vodka, satiated by sex.

The lake was iced and silent, a great dark expanse in front of her draped with the twinkling lights of its settlements. The slightest breeze played with her hair and somewhere to her right, a specimen of invisible wildlife snuffled about in the grasses at the base of the tourist information board that told how the lake was a flooded meteorite crater, seventy-five million years old, ancient and wise.

She took a mouthful of tea. It was nice, she mused, to have someone waiting for her inside. It had been a long time since she'd had that. For too long she'd been by herself, a lone soldier, no-one watching her back, no-one to catch her when she fell. It was often the only reason she'd been able to carry on fighting, knowing she had no choice, but paradoxically it was also what sapped her. She wondered which effect was the stronger.

A motor came into earshot, the only human sound around. She looked, and saw an army jeep purring slowly up the gentle rise. It was too dark to see who was in it, but Jack Tipper pulled his cap down further anyway as he drove, and continued onwards.

Lara watched it go, deciding a base must be nearby, and then got up and went inside to bed.


	12. Shattered Mirror

_Shattered Mirror  
_

"You still think I'm going to let you keep it, don't you?"

"'Not your decision to make."

"Then why," Lara asked, smiling, "are we here?"

"Because you asked to come here."

"You really do believe that seeing the cradle will change my mind, don't you?"

Kurtis stopped and faced her.

"Pretty much. And anyway, you gonna be on my side if I don't show willing and bring you here?"

"Not really."

"So there you have it. At least I'm getting a little sightseeing done."

They were indeed. They were hiking, halfway up a steep and roughly sloped hill overlooking the crater lake. The grass was long, windswept, and battered by the weather where it poked through the crisp, white snow that lay thickly across the landscape. The air smelt fresh, was bitterly cold and cut nastily against Lara's skin when it found its way in past her hood, but she was still sweating from the climb under all her layers of clothing.

She stopped to survey the view and then hurried on to catch up Kurtis, who'd strode ahead.

"So where's the entrance?"

"Up here."

"Is it sealed? I can't imagine it would have been left open to the public all this time."

"Yeah, it's sealed."

No more was said as Kurtis led her the final few yards, to the top of the hill and on its slope furthest from the lake. There, a doorway-sized outcrop of metamorphic rock rose up, little clumps of grass growing in crannies and little clumps of snow sticking to ridges. Lara tensed as she felt a faint buzz throughout her body, like electricity in the air.

Kurtis noticed her reaction. "Take out the Chirugai," he offered.

She did, slinging her backpack to the ground and rummaging quickly inside for the relic. The moment her fingers closed around it, she could tell that something about it was different. It was vibrating fast and as she pulled it into view she could she that it carried those same little orange motes in a glowing sea that meant that it was awake. She held it up and was drawn to take it closer to the outcrop. The blades ejected, the vibrating became stronger, and Lara felt the connection.

Like light breaking through a shaft into darkness, orange beams leapt forth from the rock, quickly and perfectly drawing out an ornate letter 'L' shot through with the Lux Veritatis arrow. Lara's eyes widened in amazement and the brand remained, glowing like channels of molten orange gold.

A crack appeared, then another, and another, penetrating the outcrop, radiating out across it like spidery legs, turning the rock face into a mosaic of fragments that, all at once, collapsed inwards. The outcrop was opened up, a tunnel revealed, the rocks no more than shards and dust in a heap.

Lara looked to Kurtis, awe clear on her face. "I did that?"

Kurtis simply gestured to the opening. "After you."

Lara picked up her bag and hesitantly stepped through the mouth of the tunnel. With that small movement uncovering no more surprises, she continued on more comfortably.

"Is this natural?" she asked, staring around her at the unshored, solid open construction of blackened rock.

"The meteorite hit, caused the crater, raised the hills, and then something in it must have exploded, sending splashes of hot liquid up through the earth. These tunnels are all around the lake, though this is the only one that goes to the surface. If we follow it down far enough..."

"It will take us straight to the source," Lara finished. "What must it have contained to be able to do this?"

"It made metals stronger than anything on earth and imbued them with demon-killing powers, I'd say it was something pretty heavenly."

"Sent by God to fight against his fallen angels?"

"Maybe."

They were heading steeply down inside the hill, the air getting even colder than it was on the surface, the Chirugai lighting their way with its ever present glow. That light did not penetrate far, however, and stretching out ahead and behind them was only an eerie, inky blackness, and silence.

The air took on a dampness as they travelled further, and, as drips seeping from the fabric of the rock above splashed onto Lara's head, she surmised that they had gone beneath the lake.

At last, there was a faint orange light ahead that got stronger as they drew nearer, becoming eventually a soft illumination emanating from an open cavern. They reached it, stepped out into it, found the light hanging in the air like fog and filling a space whose floor had been blown outwards and whose ceiling had partially collapsed back in.

Below, it was concave, above, convex and broken, and through tiny cracks and holes, water ran in from the lake above and collected on the rocks before falling away under its own weight and plummeting down to evaporate with a hiss on the lava lake that filled the bowl. All around, similar tunnels to the one she'd just exited led away, connected only by the small circumferential ledge she stood upon.

"Astounding," Lara breathed.

Slowly, something pushed through her distraction, and she blinked as she noticed it, caught onto it, and brought it to the forefront of her mind. It was the link with the Chirugai, but in the cavern, it was sharper, stronger, clearer than she'd felt it before. It was as if the signal had been amplified, a window opened. She looked down at the weapon trembling in her hand and she knew that if she released it, she'd be able to control its flight in the most intricate pattern imaginable with barely a thought.

"You feel the power now?" Kurtis asked.

Lara nodded, dumbfounded.

He nodded towards the lava. "So throw it in."

She stared at him blankly for a moment, and then stuttered. "I- erm-"

"You see it's stupid now. To destroy something with that much power. Maybe you can't feel it all out there, back out in the world, but it's there, in that thing."

"No," Lara disagreed. "No, it needs to be destroyed." She looked down at it, awed. "There is amazing power in this weapon. And surely that's why we can't risk it falling into the wrong hands."

Kurtis' face hardened, along with his voice. "Don't be stupid, Lara."

"I'm not being stupid. This weapon is...it's phenomenal."

"And that's why I want it." His reply was almost spat out.

She couldn't get over the connection in her mind, the sensation in her body. Kurtis' growing anger wasn't getting through to her.

"A nuclear bomb. Imagine if that got into the wrong hands."

"That isn't a bomb, Lara, it's what keeps me alive. You do want me alive, don't you?"

"I'm amazed this was even made. It doesn't just kill demons...I can feel it, I- you could walk through hell with this thing, cut down everything in your way, cut down the devil himself."

"It's too much for you." He snatched for it, but she was faster, jerking it out of his reach and stilling him with a look that wasn't focused on him at all.

"I think it might have been too much for you," she retorted. "You don't appreciate-"

She was cut off by the sound of crumbling rock in the tunnel a little way behind her and whirled towards it, her senses in overdrive.

Becoming curious, she moved forwards to investigate.

Kurtis' expression darkened further, his mouth twisting into a sneer, his eyes losing their warmth. "Don't you walk away from me," he snarled. When she ignored him, he lunged forwards to pull her roughly back towards him, but again she was faster. In a split-second, she had turned, Chirugai raised to his throat, warding him off.

"Wait here," she said forcefully. She backed off, keeping the weapon raised, her eyes glazed. Kurtis had no choice but to obey.

Once she was out of sight in the tunnel, her mind began to clear, and she became aware that she hadn't quite been herself. She shook her head, clearing her mind, and nearly went back to apologise. But, something stopped her. And then she noticed the crumbling pebbles on the ground and the fight was forgotten.

Mouth open in wonder, she stooped to pick some up. They were the same grey colour and grainy texture as the mysterious stone that had appeared in the mansion. There was no mistaking it. That stone must have come from the crater. It had seemingly dropped out of thin air. Had it been a message? From Putai? No, that wasn't her style. The Lux Veritatis? Why not send it to Kurtis? He was one of them, after all, not her.

She looked up, paying more attention to her surroundings than before, looking for clues. There was nothing except for cold rock and the heat on her back that, even from there, could be felt from the lava pool. She was still willing to bet that noise hadn't just been a coincidence, though.

Lara stood, continuing on. She was at the edge of the illumination from the glow that hung in the main chamber, so she held the Chirugai aloft like a torch once more, pressing into the darkness.

Further on, the tunnel ended, opening out into another chamber, smaller than the last, although still too large for the Chirugai to properly light, and with no other exits. She peered around into the shadows, wondering what it was she had been led to see.

Light shot up the tunnel, making her step back in surprise. The orange mist surged towards her like a wave, and burst out into the chamber, settling throughout the air, diminishing the shadows.

Lara gasped.

The walls were almost entirely covered in carvings. Starting at the ceiling on one side, reaching to the floor, columns and columns of carved writing. She looked closer. They were names.

Victor Vasiley. James of Cottam. Sarah Archer. Nicolas Ivanov. Pedro Alverez.

The list carried on, ornate lettering, thousands and thousands of people, modern variants creeping in as the list – and time – went on...it was, she realised, a Vietnam Memorial, a definitive list, a grave marking for every Lux Veritatis that had ever died in the line of duty. And there, at the end, the last Lux Veritatis, the final name...

_Putai. "Didn't you kill Karel"?_

_Him. "No wonder they're all extinct."_

_Sian. "I want it."  
_

_Putai. "Escort it through the demons."_

_Sian. "Humans. They're so easy to control."_

_Putai. "Only give up the Chirugai when all doubt is gone."_

_Him. "And that's why I want it."  
_

_The rock fell from nowhere, landing on the bedroom floor._

_She brushed his hair from his face as she kissed him, only half noting the deep scratch on his temple._

_The pages of the book fluttered._

_Shouldn't he have been frozen with everyone else?_

"_I think it's more that they found you."_

_The Chirugai sat in her hands uninterestedly, thinking nothing of its previous owner._

_He always kissed her when he wanted her to stop thinking._

_The demons were after the Chirugai._

"_Escort it through the demons, Lara."_

Her chest heaved as she fought back rage and tears all at once.

"Why didn't you tell me?" she asked, the words whispered with anger.

"Because," said Putai from behind her, "you needed to take that journey."

"Why?" She turned slowly, her eyes blazing. "So I could suffer?"

"Because your heart was weary."

"Oh cut the poetry, Putai," Lara exploded. "I don't buy it."

Putai bowed her head a moment, and then acquiesced. "You needed to learn a lesson. He could teach it to you."

"What lesson?"

"You were all too ready to deny your concerns and accept his partnership. Being deceived in that way, that is something you cannot risk. Your duties are too important."

"So you let me go and do exactly that?"

"Doesn't a child most quickly learn to stay away from the oven once he has scolded himself?"

Lara glared. "I am not a child!"

It was Putai's turn to lose her temper. She slammed the tip of her staff on the ground, shouted with a voice Lara didn't realise Putai possessed. "You are tasked with saving the world because you are one of the few strong enough. You do not have to do it alone, but you choose to. You think your solitude gives you strength, that is how you choose to proceed. Well then, why did you allow yourself to be deceived like this?"

"Don't you accuse me of having some martyr complex!" Lara cried. "Kurtis and I worked very well together before he died!"

"But he _is_ dead! And you did not want to accept that!"

"So now you're saying I _can't_ be alone?"

"I am saying that if you can't accept the hand of friendship when it's there, you can't hope to survive when it isn't!"

Silence fell. Lara had no answer.

Putai spoke again, her voice calmer. "You endanger us all if you nurture this weakness." She nodded towards the tunnel. "Now go."

Lara just stood, blinking. And then she turned and slowly walked away.


	13. The Ward

**I am amazed, overjoyed, and relieved to have finally finished this fic so many years after I started it. The whole thing started at its end - the ending scene was the first thing I planned out and it's what I've been working towards all this time. Now, let me reintroduce you to Alfredo and Jack. They've been popping up throughout the story, but it started so long ago, I wouldn't be surprised if you've forgotten them. They're a couple of soldiers, part of an unmarked but apparently international special forces unit. They were there at the Strahov when Lara escaped, they were there at the French border when Lara nearly got found sneaking through, they were there when she was declared innocent, they were there when a reporter nearly exposed her as the woman behind the Louvre break-in, and they're here again today. They seem to help her a lot, but she never seems to notice...**

**And now, onto the home stretch. I hope you enjoyed this story. It's for anyone who's ever believed that the world has forgotten them. It hasn't. There will always be someone who'd miss you if you were gone. :-)  
**

_The Ward_

Lara emerged slowly back into the main cavern with her eyes held low and the Chirugai clutched loosely at her side. She was melancholy, lost. She looked small. Taking off her restrictive coat, she dropped it to the ground.

"Hey, you find anything?" Kurtis asked, stepping towards her. Except it wasn't Kurtis.

She didn't answer and she didn't look up. She just stared at the ground.

"Listen, I'm sorry I blew up at you there-"

Suddenly, the Chirugai's blades were at his throat and her eyes were boring into his, her face showing nothing more than pure, murderous rage. "Enough," she spat. "Who are you?"

He didn't answer for a moment, just staring at her in confusion, but her face told him that she knew the truth, and so he let his own show through. His mouth twisted, he gave a scornful laugh, his eyes became dark and soulless. The entire visage was frighteningly evil. Then he sneered, "Stupid girl."

Lara held his gaze.

"You don't even know whether or not I'm Karel, do you?"

"You wish you were that powerful. You're not Karel; it doesn't make sense for you to be him. You're only after the Chirugai, and he wouldn't want or need that. You're just some run-of-the-mill demon. Nothing more. What I was asking for was a name. So I'd know who I was about to kill."

"Run-of-the-mill? Is that what you think?" His voice held a note of amusement.

"I seriously doubt you're the devil himself."

He smiled nastily. "No. I'm not."

"You really are nothing, then." Lara began to walk forwards, the blades still held against his throat, forcing him back. Her eyes, too, were cold. "You don't give me your name because I won't have even heard of you. Not got a single claim to fame?"

Her mockery didn't have much effect. He just continued to grin, still pretending – or believing – that he actually still had the upper hand.

"Why don't we just cut the foreplay and get straight down to business?"

"You'll never get the Chirugai from me now."

"I know. I failed there. Perhaps I need a few more drama classes. But given the choice between taking it by force and not getting it at all, I think I'll choose force. Maybe I won't be able to use it that well, but I'll get some good out of it."

"You'll get nothing." With that last word she thrust the Chirugai against his neck, shoving him back to the edge of the lava-filled pit. He balanced patiently.

"You wanna kill me, Croft, you'll have to do more than push me in. The moment you move to strike..."

"Shut up," she hissed, pushing again. He wobbled.

She hesitated, weighing up her options, steeling herself. Her free hand clenched and unclenched repeatedly.

Biting her lip, she drew the weapon back to slit his throat, and in that split second, in that instant of time too short for any human to react, he took on the offensive.

He ducked, leaving the blades to whistle over his head, and punched. The blow came before she'd even registered his movement. Lara fell back, stumbling, only just managing to keep her grip on the Chirugai, and he was already on top of her, pinning her to the floor, hitting her in the ribs and head and face.

His movements were a blur, the attacks too fast to block. She cried out from the pain, curled her fingers tighter around the Chirugai and thrust out with it blindly.

He fell back, letting out a keening wail, and Lara pushed herself up. He was crouching near the edge, clutching at a long, deep laceration in his arm where the blades had caught him. The skin there was singed and blackened, bubbling as if burning. Lara swallowed, sickened, but pushed any sense of compassion aside in an effort to ensure her survival.

She got fully to her feet and stalked closer to him, meaning to attack again, in a spot more vulnerable, but in her approach, he recovered. His head shot up, his murderous gaze locking onto her, and then she was being slammed back against the wall and pinned there, again under the onslaught of a vicious and impossibly fast offensive. He had a new tactic, though, and she was bleeding, her skin being scratched and torn by what felt like teeth and claws. She screamed as a deep cut was opened up dangerously close to her eye, and then sharp talons dug into her cheek.

Again, Lara struck out desperately.

The howl that resulted that time was longer, louder, and she surmised she'd done more serious damage than before. Wiping the blood from her vision, she looked, and saw him fallen to his knees a little way away, his top slashed right through across one side of his chest and more burning flesh showing through the hole.

She couldn't waste a second. Lara launched herself at him, stabbing and cutting where she could, drawing scream after scream, pushing him ever back towards the lava whilst it was all he could do to protect his throat and heart.

At last, he was there, and, with a cry of both effort and mourning, she gave him one last shove.

He fell, only just managing to catch on to the edge of the ground, dangling above the spitting and steaming fires.

She stood above him, her face stony, and then got to her knees, grabbed a handful of his hair, and jerked his head backwards to expose his neck. He snarled and grimaced, but held on.

"I can't imagine you could survive a blade through your windpipe."

He began to laugh, actually laugh, but Lara didn't react.

"You're an idiot. You kill me, and you're fucked."

"How so?" she asked sarcastically.

"If that's so valuable to us, why do you think you've had so few attacks?" He smirked and then lowered his voice conspiratorially. "I've been holding them off. They're all around you, watching, waiting, but most of them didn't dare to try anything as long as I was around. They're scared of me."

"I'm so impressed."

"You oughta be worried. The moment you kill me, they'll go for you."

"The moment I kill you, I'll throw the Chirugai in after you."

He laughed again, louder than before, somehow so amused. It gave him something of the upper hand and she hated it.

"And you think a bunch of demons will just watch it go and then turn around and go home? They'll still take their fun, Lara, and their revenge. They'll tear you limb from limb. Literally."

"As will you if I let you go."

"Oh, but you have a choice. Let me go, give me the Chirugai. I'll protect you."

She laughed hollowly. "I'm hardly that stupid."

"It's your funeral," he said.

Lara's face became even harder. "Maybe so."

She moved for the kill, but before she could do it, his eyes became warm again, his face showed fear, and Kurtis said, "Please, Lara. Please."

He took a quick, terrified glance down at his threatening fate, and then looked back up to her, pleading. "Lara, don't do this."

She drew back, horrified. "You're not..." she whispered.

"Come on, Croft. All we've been through...the Louvre? The Strahov?"

Lara shook her head vehemently. "Kurtis is dead. Kurtis is dead!"

"Please. Lara."

She blinked away tears, sniffed. "Dead," she told herself. "He's already dead."

"No! He just possessed me! It's me! It's me!"

She was frozen. She couldn't do it. She kept telling herself inside, 'it's a trick, it's a trick,' but she couldn't move, and Kurtis just kept begging her.

Shaking her head once more, she steeled herself.

The demon's face returned and he laughed at her tears.

And then she jerked the blades across his throat, drawing a gasp that caught in his mouth, turning his mocking gaze into a wide-eyed stare, and leaving a deep, gaping, charred wound.

She pushed, and he fell, hitting the lava, blackening and burning completely as he sunk into its viscous heat, and she began to cry.

She cried for Kurtis, she cried for herself, she cried for Konstantin and the fifteen knights, and as she knelt at the edge and sobbed, she didn't care that a surprised and excited choir of whispers was taking up all around her. She'd heard it before, that first night in the hotel in Prague, only now, she understood what it was. A crowd of demons. They'd been wary then, unwilling to attack an untested stranger, each one waiting for another to make the first move. But they'd had time to watch her, had time to be strengthened by their lust for the weapon that they thought might raise them to greatness and now the one they feared had gone, slain by the woman. They were uncertain, that was all.

Slowly, she opened her hands to let the Chirugai tumble forwards to be destroyed.

The relic dropped, flight gone, seemingly singing of its death as the blades whistled through the air, and hit the fires of its cradle. Melting, it sank.

Lara closed her eyes and waited.

There was silence.

And then there was revenge.

She was stung as a small, thin cut opened up on her shoulder, and she gasped, her hand flying to cover the wound. Then there was another on her arm, then her leg.

She scrambled to her feet, and the whispering built again.

There was no-one to be seen, the demons invisible, but she could feel their presence, hear their chatter. She knew was surrounded.

She also knew that she'd just been tested. And any minute...

It felt as if a wall had been slammed into her. She was knocked back, clawed by a hundred attackers on all sides, little beads of blood springing up all over her body, death by a thousand cuts.

Lara screamed, agonised.

And then there was movement in front of her, as if something had just launched itself at one of her aggressors. There was a small explosion of orange light as they clashed, and then another to her right, then to her left, then all around her. The cavern was filled with them, the fight of two invisible armies, the whispering almost deafening with a volume brought about by anger and disarray.

She was not saved, though. She was still being scratched and pricked, flailing her arms in an attempt to knock the demons away, screaming through the noise and fight, pained, confused, her skin slick with her own blood.

Something hit her, hard, on her temple, and she was stunned for a second before helplessly, inevitably, sliding into unconsciousness. She began to drop to the ground, and she was given a push, toppling over the edge towards the lava below whilst her gun, useless and unused, fell from its holster and dropped ahead of her.

"Gah!"

Alfredo's wordless cry as he saw her fall was born of fear. He dived, sliding to the rim of the pit, only just managing to grab her wrist before she plummeted into the lava. He gasped in relief.

A flash of orange flared near his head, and he ducked and covered, unable to do more to protect himself. His whole body was tense, his breathing shallow. Things were quieting around them, though, the layers of whispers thinned to almost nothing, the pauses between flashes becoming longer.

At last, the cavern was still.

Quick footsteps sounded in the tunnel, and then Jack appeared. Immediately taking in the situation, he ran to Alfredo's side and together, they hauled Lara up.

She was still unconscious, her skin covered in sweat and blood, her hair a tangled mess. They laid her safely on her side by the wall.

Jack looked around, listening hard.

"I think they got 'em all," Alfredo panted. "There's no-one here."

"Did she destroy it?"

"I think so." It was Alfredo's turn to look around. "I don't see it anywhere."

"Ok. Well, make sure it's destroyed, make sure she's safe, move out. Boss's orders." Jack stood.

"Shouldn't we stay 'til she comes around?"

"Nah, better not. Let's go. Demolition guys wanna seal this place as soon as she's gone."

Alfredo stood too, slower. He looked down at Lara, deceptively peaceful. Sympathy was on his face.

Without another word, the soldiers left.

From nowhere, Lara's gun dropped to the ground by her hand, clattering on the rock.


	14. Epilogue

_Epilogue_

The lights on the Manor's gates cast a small, weak puddle of light on the otherwise black lane. Their reflection shone in the puddle that always formed there in the heavy rains, and then it was broken as a gust rippled the surface. Nearby, a rustling and a panting grew nearer.

Lara stumbled on the uneven verge.

She was exhausted, dirty and still unable to process all that had happened to her.

It had only been two days.

She'd returned to England as quickly as possible after coming around at the lake, and landed on the Sunday afternoon in London. Then she'd taken the last train, then the last bus, and been left with a mile-long walk down the unlit country road well after dark.

Fumbling with the key, she managed to unlock the gates, and left them open wide as she dragged herself the last few hundred yards down her driveway.

The Manor loomed above her, dark and silent save for the trickling of the fountain and the small lights that marked the edges of the lawns. It was empty. Winston had been gone for years, after all.

She squinted. There was something...burning?

No, it wasn't burning. It had the colour of flame, but it didn't move that way. She drew closer, the sight becoming ever clearer, and the sick feeling in her stomach growing ever worse.

By the time she reached the door, the light had almost done its work. It finished off the last few scrolls, dancing across the wood, leaving only smooth engravings in its wake.

And then it was gone.

Lara traced the symbol with her fingers. A large, ornate, Lux Veritatis arrow.

She leant her head against the door, and cried.

The End


End file.
